However, their prevalence and the complexity of email address formats make them a frequent target for attackers seeking to bypass weak validation and inject malicious payloads. Security researcher coffinxp states that attackers may register or submit forms with crafted email addresses containing XSS payloads. These attacks highlight the critical need for robust input validation and sanitization in web applications, especially where user-supplied email addresses are involved. By injecting carriage return and line feed (CRLF) characters (%0d%0a or \r\n), attackers can add new headers such as CC, BCC, or even alter the email content. Beyond XSS, SSRF, and header injection, email input fields can be exploited for SQL injection, command injection, open redirects, and business logic abuses. As attackers continue to innovate, email input fields remain a prime target for exploitation. Email header injection exploits occur when user input is inserted directly into email headers without sanitization. Outbound Request Controls: Restrict server-side requests during email validation to trusted domains and block requests to internal or reserved IP ranges. Email input fields are ubiquitous in modern web applications, used for registration, password resets, notifications, and more. Some applications validate email addresses by making outbound requests, such as checking MX records or fetching avatars. If these payloads are echoed back in the application’s HTML without proper sanitization, attackers can execute scripts to steal cookies, hijack sessions, or deface content. Cyber Security News is a Dedicated News Platform For Cyber News, Cyber Attack News, Hacking News & Vulnerability Analysis. This allows attackers to send spam, perform phishing, or manipulate the content and recipients of emails sent by the application. Regular security testing and adopting secure coding practices are essential to safeguard both user data and application integrity. Attackers may also use Unicode and homograph attacks to bypass validation or impersonate legitimate users. Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security.
This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Mon, 05 May 2025 11:55:11 +0000