Programming Social Applications

Arbitrary Code Execution with document.createElement

If the third-party code has access to the page’s root DOM but has restrictions on the scripts being loaded, it can execute arbitrary code blocks that have access to the page’s global object.

The premise behind this attack vector is to create script blocks that can capture user information, such as site cookies:

var script = document.createElement("script");
script.appendChild(
   document.createTextNode(
      var userCookie = document.cookie;
      //use user cookies
   )
);
document.body.appendChild(script);

Note

The full code for this sample is available at https://github.com/jcleblanc/programming-social-applications/blob/master/chapter_8/attack_vector_code_execution.js.

Using document.getElement, you can create a new script block, attach a block of code to hijack user information, and then attach that code to the body of the DOM to automatically render it, executing the malicious block within.