Cross-site Scripting in org.xwiki.commons:xwiki-commons-xml

Impact

The “restricted” mode of the HTML cleaner in XWiki, introduced in version 4.2-milestone-1 and massively improved in version 14.6-rc-1, allowed the injection of arbitrary HTML code and thus cross-site scripting via invalid HTML comments. As a consequence, any code relying on this “restricted” mode for security is vulnerable to JavaScript injection (“cross-site scripting”/XSS). An example are anonymous comments in XWiki where the HTML macro filters HTML using restricted mode:

{{html}}
 <details open>
{{/html}}

When a privileged user with programming rights visits such a comment in XWiki, the malicious JavaScript code is executed in the context of the user session. This allows server-side code execution with programming rights, impacting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the XWiki instance.

Note that while all versions since 4.2-milestone-1 should be vulnerable, only starting with version 14.6-rc-1 the HTML comment is necessary for the attack to succeed due to another vulnerability that has been patched in version 14.6-rc-1.

Patches

This problem has been patched in XWiki 14.10, HTML comments are now removed in restricted mode and a check has been introduced that ensures that comments don’t start with >.

Workarounds

There are no known workarounds apart from upgrading to a version including the fix.

References

• https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XCOMMONS-2568
• https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-20348
• https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-commons/commit/8ff1a9d7e5d7b45b690134a537d53dc05cae04ab

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

• Open an issue in Jira XWiki
• Email us at XWiki Security mailing-list

Attribution

This vulnerability was reported on Intigriti by ynoof @Ynoof5.