𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐈 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐍𝐀𝐒𝐀’𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐗𝐒𝐒.

A Red Teamer’s Journey from Cosmic Curiosity to Bug‑Bounty Bragging Rights

🚀 Introduction

I’m Ananda Krishna (0xG4057), a security researcher who loves two things: breaking code and staring at space documentaries at 3 AM.

When NASA opened up a public bug‑bounty program, I knew I had to try my luck. Fast‑forward a few late‑night hacking sessions and a heroic amount of caffeine, and — boom — I earned a spot in their legendary Hall of Fame.

In this post I’ll walk you through how an innocuous parameter on a well known NASA sub‑domain became my golden ticket.

Disclaimer: Educational purposes only. Do not test systems without explicit permission. NASA rocks, and so should your ethics.

🚀0x01 — Reconnaissance Methodology (a.k.a. Deep‑Space Scan)

1. Sub‑domain Enumeration Amass, Subfinder, and certificate‑transparency sweeps (crt.sh) located ~3 500 NASA‑owned hostnames. (Fun fact: there are fewer dwarf planets.)
2. Technology Fingerprinting httpx and custom TLS probes flagged several Adobe ColdFusion 2021 instances running happily sans WAF
3. Target Selection One ColdFusion host running an unauthenticated “technology database” looked as lonely as Pluto; perfect for testing client‑side issues.

Nasa Subdomain

🚀 0x02 — Input‑Vector Isolation (“Please Sir, May I See Your event Parameter?”)

Every content request hit a controller pattern:

/index.cfm?event=<controller>.<action>

Supplying an undefined event value triggered a verbose ColdFusion exception that echoed the parameter inside HTML. Translation: reflection city, population = my payload.

Tech Database

Sample probe:

/index.cfm?event=alert(1)

Result: alert(1) appeared inside <pre> tags. That “ding” sound was my exploit radar.

Stack-Trace Error

🚀 0x03 — Payload Evolution (Condensed)

Quick timeline of the five payloads that escalated the XSS from “hello world” to full session takeover:

Payload generation

All payloads succeeded because ColdFusion’s error handler printed the event parameter without output encoding, allowing multiple parse contexts.

Xss Triggered.

Cookies Pulled up.

🚀 0x04 — Risk & Impact Analysis (CVSS v3.1 = 8.6)

— Risk & Impact Analysis (CVSS v3.1 = 8.6) — Risk & Impact Analysis (CVSS v3.1 = 8.6)

Session Hijacking Authenticated NASA staff cookies could be exfiltrated faster than you can say “one small step.”

Privilege Escalation Admin sessions exposed ColdFusion Administrator, opening server‑side doors.

Information Disclosure Research metadata visible to any attacker with an HTTP client and bad intentions.

CVSS metrics: AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N.

🚀 0x05 — Disclosure Timeline (Ground Control to Major Vulnerability)

Timelines for Triage

NASA’s four‑day patch turnaround: stellar performance (pun intended).

NASA VDP

🚀 0x06 — Defensive Recommendations

Centralised Output Encoding Leverage OWASP ESAPI or cfml‑security libraries for every error variable.

Content‑Security‑Policy default‑src 'self' with nonce‑based inline scripts to cage runaway JS.

Disable Verbose Stack Traces application.cfc → this.showdebugoutput = false in production. Debug servers are for staging, not the cosmos.

WAF Hardening Enable ModSecurity Core Rule Set tuned for CFML.

🚀 0x07 — Conclusion (Lessons from Low‑Earth Orbit)

Although I spend most of my time on red‑team engagements — not traditional bug‑bounty hunting — I spun up a Bugcrowd account solely because NASA’s program lives there. If you’re curious, my profile (with exactly one submission so far) is over at https://bugcrowd.com/G4o7T

This exercise proves that even familiar attack classes like reflected XSS can deliver high impact when paired with verbose error handlers and legacy frameworks. Systematic reconnaissance, careful payload tuning, and fast, responsible disclosure remain the pillars of effective vulnerability research.

Hall of Fame recognition is gratifying, but the bigger win is collaborative security: researchers report, vendors remediate, and users stay protected. Next on my checklist: digging into CFML deserialization — because space may be the final frontier, but legacy middleware is still the asteroid field we need to navigate.

Author: Ananda Krishna (0xG4057)