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Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

CVE-2023-22456

Medium
6.1/10

Summary

ViewVC, a browser interface for CVS and Subversion version control repositories, as a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affects versions prior to 1.2.2 and 1.1.29. The impact of this vulnerability is mitigated by the need for an attacker to have commit privileges to a Subversion repository exposed by an otherwise trusted ViewVC instance. The attack vector involves files with unsafe names (names that, when embedded into an HTML stream, would cause the browser to run unwanted code), which themselves can be challenging to create. Users should update to at least version 1.2.2 (if they are using a 1.2.x version of ViewVC) or 1.1.29 (if they are using a 1.1.x version). ViewVC 1.0.x is no longer supported, so users of that release lineage should implement a workaround. Users can edit their ViewVC EZT view templates to manually HTML-escape changed paths during rendering. Locate in your template set's `revision.ezt` file references to those changed paths, and wrap them with `[format "html"]` and `[end]`. For most users, that means that references to `[changes.path]` will become `[format "html"][changes.path][end]`. (This workaround should be reverted after upgrading to a patched version of ViewVC, else changed path names will be doubly escaped.)

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • LOW
  • CHANGED
  • REQUIRED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • NONE

CWE-79 - Cross Site Scripting

Cross-Site Scripting, commonly referred to as XSS, is the most dominant class of vulnerabilities. It allows an attacker to inject malicious code into a pregnable web application and victimize its users. The exploitation of such a weakness can cause severe issues such as account takeover, and sensitive data exfiltration. Because of the prevalence of XSS vulnerabilities and their high rate of exploitation, it has remained in the OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities for years.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published