Resources consumption in Reptile webserver daily version

[Donato Ferrante]

Donato Ferrante


Application: Reptile Web Server
http://sourceforge.net/projects/reptilews

Version: daily version

Bug: resources consumption

Author: Donato Ferrante
e-mail: fdonato@autistici.org
web: www.autistici.org/fdonato



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1. Description
2. The bug
3. The code
4. The fix



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1. Description:
----------------

Vendor's Description:

"Reptile is a web server made in Python. It supports server side
scripting with "Embedded Python", PHP, and CGI scripts. It has an
integrated HTML/XML validator that checks the pages before publication
and others handy features."



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2. The bug:
------------

The program doesn't well manage the user input string.
In fact it waits the HTTP version. So an attacker can consume a lot of
CPU resources, sending crafted strings.



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3. The code:
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To test the vulnerability simply send to the webserver some (about 10)
strings like:

GET index.htm

without specify the HTTP* at the end of the GET request, and where
the requested file must be avaible in the public_html directory.



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4. The fix:
------------

No fix.
Reptile Web Server is no more supported.



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