Vulnerability Scan Result
| Title: | Why China is trying to tame its electric car frenzy | The Straits Times |
| Description: | Overproduction and excessive competition is causing problems across the board. Read more at straitstimes.com. |
| ip_address | 18.245.218.94 |
| country | US  |
| network_name | Amazon Inc |
| asn | AS16509 |
| ip_address | 18.245.218.56 |
| country | US |
| network_name | Amazon Inc |
| asn | AS16509 |
| ip_address | 18.245.218.90 |
| country | US |
| network_name | Amazon Inc |
| asn | AS16509 |
| ip_address | 18.245.218.40 |
| country | US |
| network_name | Amazon Inc |
| asn | AS16509 |
80/tcp | http | Amazon CloudFront httpd - |
443/tcp | https | CloudFront - |
| Software / Version | Category |
|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | PaaS |
| AWS Certificate Manager | SSL/TLS certificate authorities |
| Amazon CloudFront | CDN |
| Amazon ALB | Load balancers |
| Amazon S3 | CDN |
| Google Publisher Tag | Advertising |
| HTTP/3 | Miscellaneous |
| Permutive | Miscellaneous |
| Prebid | Advertising |
| Skimlinks | Affiliate programs |
| Brightcove | Video players |
| reCAPTCHA | Security |
| HSTS | Security |
Web Application Vulnerabilities
Evidence
| URL | Cookie Name | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| https://www.straitstimes.com/life/motoring/why-china-is-trying-to-tame-its-electric-car-frenzy | sph_user_country | The server responded with Set-Cookie header(s) that does not specify the HttpOnly flag: Set-Cookie: sph_user_country=GB |
Vulnerability description
We found that a cookie has been set without the HttpOnly flag, which means it can be accessed by potentially malicious JavaScript code running inside the web page. The root cause for this usually revolves around misconfigurations in the code or server settings.
Risk description
The risk is that an attacker who injects malicious JavaScript code on the page (e.g. by using an XSS attack) can access the cookie and can send it to another site. In case of a session cookie, this could lead to session hijacking.
Recommendation
Ensure that the HttpOnly flag is set for all cookies.
Classification
| CWE | CWE-1004 |
| OWASP Top 10 - 2017 | |
| OWASP Top 10 - 2021 |
Evidence
Vulnerability description
We found the robots.txt on the target server. This file instructs web crawlers what URLs and endpoints of the web application they can visit and crawl. Website administrators often misuse this file while attempting to hide some web pages from the users.
Risk description
There is no particular security risk in having a robots.txt file. However, it's important to note that adding endpoints in it should not be considered a security measure, as this file can be directly accessed and read by anyone.
Recommendation
We recommend you to manually review the entries from robots.txt and remove the ones which lead to sensitive locations in the website (ex. administration panels, configuration files, etc).
Evidence
| URL | Evidence |
|---|---|
| https://www.straitstimes.com/life/motoring/why-china-is-trying-to-tame-its-electric-car-frenzy | Response does not include the HTTP Content-Security-Policy security header or meta tag |
Vulnerability description
We noticed that the target application lacks the Content-Security-Policy (CSP) header in its HTTP responses. The CSP header is a security measure that instructs web browsers to enforce specific security rules, effectively preventing the exploitation of Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.
Risk description
The risk is that if the target application is vulnerable to XSS, lack of this header makes it easily exploitable by attackers.
Recommendation
Configure the Content-Security-Header to be sent with each HTTP response in order to apply the specific policies needed by the application.
Classification
| CWE | CWE-693 |
| OWASP Top 10 - 2017 | |
| OWASP Top 10 - 2021 |
Evidence
| Software / Version | Category |
|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | PaaS |
| AWS Certificate Manager | SSL/TLS certificate authorities |
| Amazon CloudFront | CDN |
| Amazon ALB | Load balancers |
| Amazon S3 | CDN |
| Google Publisher Tag | Advertising |
| HTTP/3 | Miscellaneous |
| Permutive | Miscellaneous |
| Prebid | Advertising |
| Skimlinks | Affiliate programs |
| Brightcove | Video players |
| reCAPTCHA | Security |
| HSTS | Security |
Vulnerability description
We noticed that server software and technology details are exposed, potentially aiding attackers in tailoring specific exploits against identified systems and versions.
Risk description
The risk is that an attacker could use this information to mount specific attacks against the identified software type and version.
Recommendation
We recommend you to eliminate the information which permits the identification of software platform, technology, server and operating system: HTTP server headers, HTML meta information, etc.
Evidence
Vulnerability description
Website is accessible.
Evidence
| URL | Method | Parameters | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.straitstimes.com/life/motoring/why-china-is-trying-to-tame-its-electric-car-frenzy | GET | Headers: User-Agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 | Email Address: stics@sph.com.sg |
Vulnerability description
We noticed that this web application exposes email addresses, which might be unintended. While not inherently a vulnerability, this information could be leveraged in social engineering or spam related activities.
Risk description
The risk is that exposed email addresses within the application could be accessed by unauthorized parties. This could lead to privacy violations, spam, phishing attacks, or other forms of misuse.
Recommendation
Compartmentalize the application to have 'safe' areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow email addresses to go outside of the trust boundary, and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
Classification
| CWE | CWE-200 |
| OWASP Top 10 - 2017 | |
| OWASP Top 10 - 2021 |
Infrastructure Vulnerabilities
Evidence
We found insecure DNS cookie usage on the following nameservers: ns-1340.awsdns-39.org, ns-1761.awsdns-28.co.uk, ns-40.awsdns-05.com, ns-936.awsdns-53.net
Vulnerability description
We found that the server does not implement DNS Cookies or uses them insecurely. DNS Cookies help prevent DNS-based attacks, such as spoofing and amplification attacks.
Risk description
The risk exists because without DNS Cookies, the server is vulnerable to DNS spoofing and amplification attacks. Attackers can manipulate responses or use the server in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, compromising network availability and security.
Recommendation
We recommend enabling DNS Cookies to prevent spoofed DNS responses. Ensure proper cookie validation is implemented to mitigate DNS amplification attacks. Regularly update DNS servers to support the latest DNS security features.
Evidence
We found insecure EDNS configuration on the following nameservers: ns-936.awsdns-53.net ns-936.awsdns-53.net:
Vulnerability description
We found that the server does not properly implement EDNS (Extension Mechanisms for DNS). EDNS allows larger DNS packets and supports modern features such as DNSSEC.
Risk description
The risk exists because improper or missing EDNS support can lead to truncated responses, degraded DNS performance, and compatibility issues with DNSSEC. This exposes users to risks such as incomplete DNS resolution and failed DNSSEC validation.
Recommendation
We recommend ensuring the proper implementation of EDNS on the DNS server. Update the DNS server software to support EDNS fully, including modern features like DNSSEC. Regularly test DNS configurations to ensure compliance and performance.
Evidence
| Domain Queried | DNS Record Type | Description | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| www.straitstimes.com | A | IPv4 address | 18.245.218.56 |
| www.straitstimes.com | A | IPv4 address | 18.245.218.90 |
| www.straitstimes.com | A | IPv4 address | 18.245.218.94 |
| www.straitstimes.com | A | IPv4 address | 18.245.218.40 |
| www.straitstimes.com | NS | Name server | ns-1340.awsdns-39.org |
| www.straitstimes.com | NS | Name server | ns-1761.awsdns-28.co.uk |
| www.straitstimes.com | NS | Name server | ns-40.awsdns-05.com |
| www.straitstimes.com | NS | Name server | ns-936.awsdns-53.net |
| www.straitstimes.com | SOA | Start of Authority | ns-1761.awsdns-28.co.uk. awsdns-hostmaster.amazon.com. 1 7200 900 1209600 86400 |
Risk description
An initial step for an attacker aiming to learn about an organization involves conducting searches on its domain names to uncover DNS records associated with the organization. This strategy aims to amass comprehensive insights into the target domain, enabling the attacker to outline the organization's external digital landscape. This gathered intelligence may subsequently serve as a foundation for launching attacks, including those based on social engineering techniques. DNS records pointing to services or servers that are no longer in use can provide an attacker with an easy entry point into the network.
Recommendation
We recommend reviewing all DNS records associated with the domain and identifying and removing unused or obsolete records.
Evidence
| Software / Version | Category |
|---|---|
| Brightcove | Video players |
| Google Sign-in | Authentication |
| YouTube | Video players |
| Amazon ALB | Load balancers |
| Amazon Web Services | PaaS |
| HSTS | Security |
| Amazon S3 | CDN |
| Amazon CloudFront | CDN |
| AWS Certificate Manager | SSL/TLS certificate authorities |
| Permutive | Miscellaneous |
| HTTP/3 | Miscellaneous |
| Taboola | Advertising |
| reCAPTCHA | Security |
| Prebid | Advertising |
| Outbrain | Widgets, Advertising |
| Linkedin Insight Tag | Analytics |
| Lightbox | JavaScript libraries |
| Google Tag Manager | Tag managers |
| Google Publisher Tag | Advertising |
| Google Analytics | Analytics |
| Funding Choices | Cookie compliance |
| Facebook Pixel 2.9.235 | Analytics |
| Chartbeat | Analytics |
Vulnerability description
We noticed that server software and technology details are exposed, potentially aiding attackers in tailoring specific exploits against identified systems and versions.
Risk description
The risk is that an attacker could use this information to mount specific attacks against the identified software type and version.
Recommendation
We recommend you to eliminate the information which permits the identification of software platform, technology, server and operating system: HTTP server headers, HTML meta information, etc.