You said:

The vast majority of people who exploit these vulnerabilities know how to find them on their own.

Agreed. But there is no point in making their task any easier.

You said:

This does little to reduce the security of his web app.

Minor point, but it isn't his. Only worth making for what follows...

As for informing your boss, I wouldn't make a big deal about it.

He said:

I have tried to explain this to my boss
And that is his problem.

He said:

My current employer, with whom I have not been very long, and I only work here part time while continuing to study....

It's very easy to forget how little respect and authority one receives, if one young (somewhat of an assumption: he could be a mature student!) or new.

He's probably both!

You said:

and suggest measures that would prevent the situation from arising in the future (secure programming standards, security audits, etc).

Exactly what he is trying to do. However, given his current lowly position in the company, the hysterisis of "it's been working fine for a couple of years", the (overused) adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" and "what does he know, he's only a kid" .

He came here looking for advice on how to make his case, with authority, to his (apparently non-Perl/programming/security aware) boss.

Finally, you said:

Fix it, tell him you fixed a security problem

He said (my highlighting):

All the customer data that is submitted to the script is as well as being emailed to us, stored in a text file. However the text file to store the data in is passed as a hidden field from the html, and there is no check to make sure that the referring page is the correct one.

Any fix is most likely going to need (at minimum) prodedural changes on behalf of the customers.

Even if this were not the case, scenario (abbreviated).

Takes code home (no authority to do it on company time)...makes a few minor changes in preparation nothing significant, just setting stuff up for the (your) 'fix'. Installs it next day...monitors it carefully functions fine. Goes home for the weekend....

By now you can probably see where this is leading.

The ha...sorry, cracker that saw his append and tracked him, or had been "casing the joint" for a couple of weeks, makes his move. Several (hundred) customers credit cards get used for whatever, and who gets the blame???

Conclusions....

In reply to Re: Re: Re: The danger of hidden fields by BrowserUk
in thread The danger of hidden fields by Gerard

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