Un3xpected DoS Attack on Profile Pictur3
Hey Everyone, Hope y’all doing Great and aw3some!
Okayyyy - First of all, I wanted to say everyone that I prefer to publish Write-ups that are unique and something strange that may help you along the way of Bug Hunting and not something cliche, so I think that this Write-up may not bore you with regular stuffs instead help you with some insights during your hunting( so keep reading ;] ). I’m not a complete bug hunter with all the knowledge, just a random bug hunter with imperfect ideas on bug hunting so please pardon the technical mistakes if any.
- The Bug -
- When I try to upload a Pixel Image in profile picture, just like every secure web application — I got a error pop-up not allowing me to upload the pixel image
- Then I tried uploading files with various extensions as well like php, .php.jpeg, .svg and other possible extensions to bypass it — Which failed as well
- Tried intercepting with Burp suite and did all the testing by changing the extension and everything — which probably failed as well
- Then I almost got fedup by doing all these testing and not getting anything from it. Actually this was the first time I tried to bypass a file upload so I tried pretty much everything on the way with the knowledge that I acquired from various writeups, blogs and videos.
Till this time I was thinking that I need to do something complex to find a bug like this and tried all the above method. Now the solution that I got was as simple it could be..,
The Solution
- Just like a normal user would do, I uploaded a valid image as the profile picture but I did not click on “Set New profile Picture”
- Instead I tried uploading the lotta pixel image now by clicking “Choose file” and then clicked “Set New profile Picture”
- Which caused Application Level DoS and the page became unresponsive when I tried from other browsers as well
- To increase the impact, I once again tried with svg, php and other extensions but it was not possible
- For the whole time I was thinking to find a bug with complex things and at the end it was as a simple thing that made this happen
Steps to Reproduce
- First upload a valid image and don’t click Set New profile picture
- Now without closing the window upload this lottapixel.jpg file by clicking choose file
- Now when you set this as new profile picture, the page becomes unresponsive.
Since it was only a DoS Attack and it was mentioned “Out of Scope” the program was kind enough to reward me with $100 for this issue.
So that’s all about the bug, glad to share my knowledge and give back to the community — If there is any mistake above, please do correct me and if there is any doubt please do contact me.
Twitter — https://twitter.com/mveswar98
~Thank you!
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