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CA3008: Review code for XPath injection vulnerabilities

  • Article
Property Value
Rule ID CA3008
Title Review code for XPath injection vulnerabilities
Category Security
Fix is breaking or non-breaking Non-breaking
Enabled by default in .NET 9 No

Cause

Potentially untrusted HTTP request input reaches an XPath query.

By default, this rule analyzes the entire codebase, but this is configurable.

Rule description

When working with untrusted input, be mindful of XPath injection attacks. Constructing XPath queries using untrusted input may allow an attacker to maliciously manipulate the query to return an unintended result, and possibly disclose the contents of the queried XML.

This rule attempts to find input from HTTP requests reaching an XPath expression.

Note

This rule can't track data across assemblies. For example, if one assembly reads the HTTP request input and then passes it to another assembly that performs an XPath query, this rule won't produce a warning.

Note

There is a configurable limit to how deep this rule will analyze data flow across method calls. See Analyzer Configuration for how to configure the limit in an EditorConfig file.

How to fix violations

Some approaches to fixing XPath injection vulnerabilities include:

  • Don't construct XPath queries from user input.
  • Validate that the input only contains a safe set of characters.
  • Escape quotation marks.

When to suppress warnings

If you know you've validated the input to be safe, it's okay to suppress this warning.

Suppress a warning

If you just want to suppress a single violation, add preprocessor directives to your source file to disable and then re-enable the rule.

#pragma warning disable CA3008
// The code that's violating the rule is on this line.
#pragma warning restore CA3008

To disable the rule for a file, folder, or project, set its severity to none in the configuration file.

[*.{cs,vb}]
dotnet_diagnostic.CA3008.severity = none

For more information, see How to suppress code analysis warnings.

Configure code to analyze

Use the following options to configure which parts of your codebase to run this rule on.

You can configure these options for just this rule, for all rules it applies to, or for all rules in this category (Security) that it applies to. For more information, see Code quality rule configuration options.

Exclude specific symbols

You can exclude specific symbols, such as types and methods, from analysis. For example, to specify that the rule should not run on any code within types named MyType, add the following key-value pair to an .editorconfig file in your project:

dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = MyType

Allowed symbol name formats in the option value (separated by |):

  • Symbol name only (includes all symbols with the name, regardless of the containing type or namespace).
  • Fully qualified names in the symbol's documentation ID format. Each symbol name requires a symbol-kind prefix, such as M: for methods, T: for types, and N: for namespaces.
  • .ctor for constructors and .cctor for static constructors.

Examples:

Option Value Summary
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = MyType Matches all symbols named MyType.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = MyType1|MyType2 Matches all symbols named either MyType1 or MyType2.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = M:NS.MyType.MyMethod(ParamType) Matches specific method MyMethod with the specified fully qualified signature.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_symbol_names = M:NS1.MyType1.MyMethod1(ParamType)|M:NS2.MyType2.MyMethod2(ParamType) Matches specific methods MyMethod1 and MyMethod2 with the respective fully qualified signatures.

Exclude specific types and their derived types

You can exclude specific types and their derived types from analysis. For example, to specify that the rule should not run on any methods within types named MyType and their derived types, add the following key-value pair to an .editorconfig file in your project:

dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = MyType

Allowed symbol name formats in the option value (separated by |):

  • Type name only (includes all types with the name, regardless of the containing type or namespace).
  • Fully qualified names in the symbol's documentation ID format, with an optional T: prefix.

Examples:

Option Value Summary
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = MyType Matches all types named MyType and all of their derived types.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = MyType1|MyType2 Matches all types named either MyType1 or MyType2 and all of their derived types.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = M:NS.MyType Matches specific type MyType with given fully qualified name and all of its derived types.
dotnet_code_quality.CAXXXX.excluded_type_names_with_derived_types = M:NS1.MyType1|M:NS2.MyType2 Matches specific types MyType1 and MyType2 with the respective fully qualified names, and all of their derived types.

Pseudo-code examples

Violation

using System;
using System.Xml.XPath;

public partial class WebForm : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    public XPathNavigator AuthorizedOperations { get; set; }

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        string operation = Request.Form["operation"];

        // If an attacker uses this for input:
        //     ' or 'a' = 'a
        // Then the XPath query will be:
        //     authorizedOperation[@username = 'anonymous' and @operationName = '' or 'a' = 'a']
        // and it will return any authorizedOperation node.
        XPathNavigator node = AuthorizedOperations.SelectSingleNode(
            "//authorizedOperation[@username = 'anonymous' and @operationName = '" + operation + "']");
    }
}

Imports System
Imports System.Xml.XPath

Partial Public Class WebForm
    Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

    Public Property AuthorizedOperations As XPathNavigator

    Protected Sub Page_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
        Dim operation As String = Me.Request.Form("operation")

        ' If an attacker uses this for input:
        '     ' or 'a' = 'a
        ' Then the XPath query will be:
        '      authorizedOperation[@username = 'anonymous' and @operationName = '' or 'a' = 'a']
        ' and it will return any authorizedOperation node.
        Dim node As XPathNavigator = AuthorizedOperations.SelectSingleNode( _
            "//authorizedOperation[@username = 'anonymous' and @operationName = '" + operation + "']")
    End Sub
End Class