Sitecore Hardening - Limiting Access to .XML, .XSLT, and .MRT Files , Issues & how to fix it

 

There was a vulnerability reported related to robots.txt during a pen test.

In this case, it has been detected that information is being disclosed about the path of the sitemap.xml file which list all the endpoints of the application.

In the same vein, sitemap.xml reveals information about the features of the application's private section.

 

To resolve the solution was to limit access to .xml files, which is suggested by Sitecore

https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/93/platform-administration-and-architecture/limit-access-to-xml,-xslt,-and-mrt-files.html

But in spite of updating the web.config with the handlers mentioned below the Sitecore website was ignoring the handlers and still continuing to process the sitemap.xml like a normal request.

<add path="*.xml" verb="*" type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler" name="xml (integrated)" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

<add path="*.xslt" verb="*" type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler" name="xslt (integrated)" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

<add path="*.config.xml" verb="*" type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler" name="config.xml (integrated)" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

<add path="*.mrt" verb="*" type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler" name="mrt (integrated)" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

 

 

This was confirmed by looking at IIS Logs

2022-01-18 07:23:50 127.0.0.1 GET /portal/sitemap.xml - 80 - 127.0.0.1 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+10.0;+Win64;+x64)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/97.0.4692.71+Safari/537.36 - 200 0 0 15


2022-01-18 07:23:59 127.0.0.1 GET /portal/sitemap.xml - 80 - 127.0.0.1 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+10.0;+Win64;+x64)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/97.0.4692.71+Safari/537.36 - 200 0 0 9

 

Deep dive analysis revealed that the static file handler was overriding the . xml (integrated)handler

<add name="StaticFile" path="*" verb="*" modules="StaticFileModule,DefaultDocumentModule,DirectoryListingModule" resourceType="Either" requireAccess="Read" />

 

So, there were two possible solutions to overcome this behavior

Option 1 - Remove static file handler

But this solution will impact on other static files served from the app service

<handlers>

<remove name="StaticFile" />

Option 2 – File Extension Filtering (Preferred)

<security>
<requestFiltering>
<requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="524288000" />
<fileExtensions>
<add fileExtension=".xml" allowed="false" />

<add fileExtension=".xslt " allowed="false" />
<add fileExtension=".mrt " allowed="false" />
</fileExtensions>
</requestFiltering>
</security>

 

 

 

 

 

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