Facebook on Thursday announced a new tool designed to help security researchers hunt for Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities.
According to the definition provided by OWASP, a SSRF attack enables an attacker to abuse a server’s functionality to read or update internal resources.
“The attacker can supply or modify a URL which the code running on the server will read or submit data to, and by carefully selecting the URLs, the attacker may be able to read server configuration such as AWS metadata, connect to internal services like http enabled databases or perform post requests towards internal services which are not intended to be exposed,” OWASP explains.
Dubbed SSRF Dashboard, the new utility from Facebook features a simple interface that allows researchers to create unique internal endpoint URLs for targeting and then learn whether their URLs have been hit during an SSRF attempt.
In addition to the generated unique SSRF attempt URL, which is listed in a table alongside other URLs, the tool also displays the creation date, a unique ID, and the number of hits the URL has received.
With the new tool, the social media platform says, security researchers can reliably determine whether their SSRF proof-of-concept (PoC) code has been successful, given that only successful PoCs receive hits.
Facebook encourages researchers who hunt for and discover SSRF vulnerabilities to include the ID of the SSRF attempt URL in their reports, along with the PoC.
“Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities are among the most difficult ones to find, given that external researchers aren’t able to detect the server’s vulnerable behavior in a direct manner,” Facebook notes.
Additional information on the tool and on how to use it, as well as other details regarding the social media platform’s bug bounty program, can be found here.
Related: Facebook Open-Sources ‘Mariana Trench’ Code Analysis Tool
Related: Facebook Paid Out $50K for Vulnerabilities Allowing Access to Internal Systems
Related: Facebook Announces Payout Guidelines for Bug Bounty Program
Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.
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