the-web-application-hackers-handbook

CHAPTER
13
Attacking Users: Other
Techniques
The preceding chapter examined the grandfather of attacks against other application
users—cross-site scripting (XSS). This chapter describes a wide range of
other attacks against users. Some of these have important similarities to XSS
attacks. In many cases, the attacks are more complex or subtle than XSS attacks
and can succeed in situations where plain XSS is not possible.
Attacks against other application users come in many forms and manifest a
variety of subtleties and nuances that are frequently overlooked. They are also
less well understood in general than the primary server-side attacks, with different
flaws being conflated or neglected even by some seasoned penetration
testers. We will describe all the different vulnerabilities that are commonly
encountered and will spell out the steps you need to follow to identify and
exploit each of these.
Inducing User Actions
The preceding chapter described how XSS attacks can be used to induce a
user to unwittingly perform actions within the application. Where the victim
user has administrative privileges, this technique can quickly lead to complete
compromise of the application. This section examines some additional methods
that can be used to induce actions by other users. These methods can be used
even in applications that are secured against XSS.
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