SA-CONTRIB-2014-117 - Hierarchical Select - Cross Site Scripting (XSS)

The Hierarchical Select module provides a “hierarchical_select” form element, which is a greatly enhanced way for letting the user select items in a taxonomy. The module does not sanitize some of the user-supplied data before displaying it, leading to two Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities that may lead to a malicious user gaining full administrative access.

The first vulnerability is mitigated by the fact that the attacker must have a role with the “administer taxonomy” permission; specifically the attacker must be able to create or modify taxonomy terms and then modify the term title. Only Hierarchical Select field instances with the “Save term lineage” option enabled in the widget settings are vulnerable.

The second vulnerability is mitigated by the fact that an attacker must have a permission to administer fields on an entity type, for example the “administer taxonomy” permission to manage fields on taxonomy terms, the “administer users” permission to manage fields on users or the “administer content type” permission to manage fields on comments or nodes.

CVE identifier(s) issued

• CVE-2014-9346

Versions affected

• Hierarchical Select 6.x versions prior to 6.x-3.9.

Drupal core is not affected. If you do not use the contributed Hierarchical Select module,
there is nothing you need to do.

Solution

Install the latest version:

• If you use the Hierarchical Select module for Drupal 6.x, upgrade to Hierarchical Select 6.x-3.9

After installing the latest version, clear all caches so that no malicious code will linger in any cached data.

Also see the Hierarchical Select project page.

Reported by

• Rodolfo Candido
• Stefan Ruijsenaars
• Matt Vance provisional member of the Drupal Security Team

Fixed by

• Stefan Ruijsenaars the module maintainer
• Matt Vance provisional member of the Drupal Security Team

Coordinated by

• Cash Williams of the Drupal Security Team
• Matt Vance provisional member of the Drupal Security Team