Insecure Privoxy Configuration in Vidalia Bundles Prior to 0.1.2.18

Gregory Fleischer (Lists) gfleischer.lists at gmail.com
Wed Oct 31 15:34:18 UTC 2007


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Versions of the Vidalia bundle prior to 0.1.2.18 install Privoxy with
an insecure configuration file.  Both Windows and Mac OS X versions
are affected.  The installed 'config.txt' file ('config' on Mac OS X)
had the following option values set to 1:

   - enable-remote-toggle
   - enable-edit-actions

Additionally, on Windows the following option was set to 1:

   - enable-remote-http-toggle

Malicious sites (or malicious exit nodes) could include active content
(e.g., JavaScript, Java, Flash) that caused the web browser to:

   - make requests through the proxy that causes Privoxy filtering to
     be bypassed or completely disabled

   - establish a direct connection from the web browser to the local
     proxy and modify the user defined configuration values

The Privoxy documentation recommends against enabling these options in
multi-user environments or when dealing with untrustworthy clients.
However, the documentation does not mention that client-side
web browser scripts or vulnerabilities could be exploited as well.

It should be noted that using Tor is not a prerequisite for some of
these attacks to be successful.  Users of Tor may be at greater risk,
because malicious exit nodes can inject content into otherwise trusted
sites.

In order to allow time for people to upgrade, additional attack
details and sample code will be withheld for a couple of days.

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