The programmer found that every time a user adds an item to the cart, a temporary file is created on the web server /tmp directory. The temporary file has a name which is generated by concatenating the content of the $USERINPUT variable and a timestamp in the form of MM-DD-YYYY, (e.g. smartphone-12-25-2013.tmp) containing the price of the item being purchased. Which of the following is MOST likely being exploited to manipulate the price of a shopping cart’s items?

After being notified of an issue with the online shopping cart, where customers are able to arbitrarily change the price of listed items, a programmer analyzes the following piece of code used by a web based shopping cart.

SELECT ITEM FROM CART WHERE ITEM=ADDSLASHES($USERINPUT);

The programmer found that every time a user adds an item to the cart, a temporary file is created on the web server /tmp directory. The temporary file has a name which is generated by concatenating the content of the $USERINPUT variable and a timestamp in the form of MM-DD-YYYY, (e.g. smartphone-12-25-2013.tmp) containing the price of the item being purchased. Which of the following is MOST likely being exploited to manipulate the price of a shopping cart’s items?
A . Input validation
B . SQL injection
C . TOCTOU
D . Session hijacking

View Answer

Answer: C

Explanation:

In this question, TOCTOU is being exploited to allow the user to modify the temp file that contains the price of the item.

In software development, time of check to time of use (TOCTOU) is a class of software bug caused by changes in a system between the checking of a condition (such as a security credential) and the use of the results of that check. This is one example of a race condition.

A simple example is as follows: Consider a Web application that allows a user to edit pages, and also allows administrators to lock pages to prevent editing. A user requests to edit a page, getting a form which can be used to alter its content. Before the user submits the form, an administrator locks the page, which should prevent editing. However, since editing has already begun, when the user submits the form, those edits (which have already been made) are accepted. When the user began editing, the appropriate authorization was checked, and the user was indeed allowed to edit.

However, the authorization was used later, at a time when edits should no longer have been allowed.

TOCTOU race conditions are most common in Unix between operations on the file system, but can occur in other contexts, including local sockets and improper use of database transactions.

Incorrect Answers:

A: Input validation is used to ensure that the correct data is entered into a field. For example, input validation would prevent letters typed into a field that expects number from being accepted. The exploit in this question is not an example of input validation.

B: SQL injection is a type of security exploit in which the attacker adds Structured Query Language (SQL) code to a Web form input box to gain access to resources or make changes to data. The exploit in this question is not an example of a SQL injection attack.

D: Session hijacking, also known as TCP session hijacking, is a method of taking over a Web user session by obtaining the session ID and masquerading as the authorized user. The exploit in this question is not an example of session hijacking.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_check_to_time_of_use