[SPIKELAB-SA] Security mailing lists: xss/css annoyance DoS.
Look ma, I've exploited 10 lines of php from 1982 that nobody on the Internet
has ever even heard of!
Xss/Css/Sql injections meant denial of serviece with death for suffocation, of most of the
security/vulnerability related mailing lists.
Honestly.
Since a bit of web
security awareness has been developed and people started looking at webapps
security, cross-site scripting attacks have been as common as buffer overflows
were in the '80s, probably worse. And lots of kids thought they could
have their minute of fame posting a SA on bugtraq or full-disclosure (or most
likely both, tnx for crossposting!). As a result after digging through spam,
removing posts from those 3 or 4 known bad apples, you're left with an avg of
30 web based exploits. a couple are probably worth reading if you deal with
those sort of things, as they are about [unfortunately] widespread apps like
phpBB, but otherwise it's a lot of wasted time (especially if you're subscribed
to 6 or 7 of these lists.
In order to save some time it's easy to setup procmail so those messages are
directed to another maildir with a low priority maybe, if you dont want to
directly throw those messages away, and let you focus on the real stuff.Example:
:0: * ^List-Id:.*(bugtraq|full-disclosure).* * ^Subject:.*(xss|sql inj|cross-site|Cross Site \ |file inclusion vuln|css|remote file incl \ |html inj|ajax|guestbook).* lists/lists.misc.xsssqlinjcss/That matches messages sent to the bugtraq and full-disclosure mailinst lists whose subject contains one of those word/expressions which most likely indicate a web exploit related post. If that's the case the email is saved in lists/..... The name is invented but I've picked that up to maintain consistency with the naming scheme for my mailinst list directory.I could have matched a list at time and redirected posts to lists.bugtraq.com.xsscss or something, but I considered it as a layer of too much.
It's not obviously perfect, it misses some stuff but it still helps a lot and it costs basically nothing in terms of implementation, so worth doing anyway.
If you want my whole ~/.procmailrc you can download it here
.