RSS Security
By S. Housley
RSS is growing at a lightening speed. What was once only
known as a "techie tool", RSS is becoming a tool that is
continuously being used by the general population. Along
with the good comes, the not so good. And while some have
mentioned the emergence of RSS spam, where content
publishers dynamically generate nonsensical feeds stuffed
with keywords, the real concern relates to security. While
an annoyance to the search engines, spam in RSS feeds pales
in comparison to the possible security concerns that could
be in RSS' future.
Security Implications Related to RSS.
As RSS gains momentum security fears loom large. As
publishers are quickly finding innovative uses for RSS
feeds, hackers are taking notice. The power and
extendibility of RSS in its simplest form is also its
achilles heel. The expansion capabilities of the RSS
specification, specifically the "enclosure" field which has
launched the podcasting phenomenon, is where the
vulnerabilities lie. The enclosure field in itself is not
the problem, in fact the majority of RSS feeds do not even
use the enclosure tag. The enclosure tag is essentially used
to link to file types, things like images, word documents,
mp3 files, power point presentations, and executables and
can be thought of in similar terms to email attachments.
The fact that RSS can be used to distribute these file types
has opened a myriad of doors to users of the syndication
standard, but also has created cause for concern. Most
people do not feel that the risk is significant because
people "choose" the content that they receive, and while it
might make the distribution of malware, viruses and spy
applications via RSS less prevalent, their is still the
inherent risk of a infected file being distributed.
The problem is one of both technology and lack of education.
The danger lies in the fact that many RSS readers, news
aggregators, or pod-catchers automatically download the
information contained in the enclosure field regardless of
its file type or source.
Most RSS developers acknowledge the risks associated with
the enclosure field, but few have had the forethought to
include filtering, screening or authentication capabilities
and many automatically download enclosures.
Nick Bradbury of Bradsoft/NewsGator seems to be proactive,
designing FeedDemon with security in mind. FeedDemon uses an
editable safelist of file types as well as allowing users to
monitor what files are automatically downloaded. FeedDemon
also contains hard-coded warnings related to specific file
types.
Developers of ByteScout took a different approach to the
handling of enclosure files, ByteScout does not
automatically download anything without user intervention
for each download.
Unfortunately, not all RSS readers, aggregators and
podcatchers consider the possible security implications
associated with RSS feeds and podcasts, some will
automatically download enclosures without warning or any
thoughts of security. Be sure to examine how your RSS reader
handles files contained in the enclosure field of an RSS
feed.
With the increased use of RSS and podcasting, the security
risks increase with it. Their is cause for concern, however
proactive users and conscientious developers can easily
subvert the risk by taking precautions seriously. Computer
viruses and malware are cause for legitimate concern, there
is ample time and action that can avert potential problems.
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for FeedForDev
http://www.feedfordev.com
an RSS component for developers.
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