AJAX DWR Forceful Method Invocation Vulnerability

Via Imperva ADC -

The Imperva Application Defense center has identified a significant vulnerability in DWR – a well known open source AJAX library that is incorporated into existing public Web sites. AJAX DWR includes two mechanisms that restrict access to sensitive functions (or “methods”). However, these mechanisms only affect client side code. Thus, an attacker can circumvent these restrictions using commonly available client tools (e.g. an HTTP client proxy) to manually manipulate browser requests. An exploit of this vulnerability can result in multiple damaging outcomes including data theft and denial of service.

Mitigating AJAX DWR Forceful Method Invocation risk requires secure code development to eliminate exposed classes that have methods which should not be invoked by the client. The code writing effort varies in complexity depending upon the phase of Web application deployment. Securing applications during initial development is less costly than securing existing applications. Imperva’s SecureSphere Web Application Firewall can be used to accelerate and reduce the cost of risk mitigation – especially for existing Web applications.