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Improperly Controlled Modification of Object Prototype Attributes ('Prototype Pollution')

CVE-2024-34698

Severity Medium
Score 4.6/10

Summary

FreeScout is a free, self-hosted help desk and shared mailbox. Versions of FreeScout prior to 1.8.139 contain a Prototype Pollution vulnerability in the `/public/js/main.js` source file. The Prototype Pollution arises because the `getQueryParam` Function recursively merges an object containing user-controllable properties into an existing object (For URL Query Parameters Parsing), without first sanitizing the keys. This can allow an attacker to inject a property with a key `__proto__`, along with arbitrarily nested properties. The merge operation assigns the nested properties to the `params` object's prototype instead of the target object itself. As a result, the attacker can pollute the prototype with properties containing harmful values, which are then inherited by user-defined objects and subsequently used by the application dangerously. The vulnerability lets an attacker control properties of objects that would otherwise be inaccessible. If the application subsequently handles an attacker-controlled property in an unsafe way, this can potentially be chained with other vulnerabilities like DOM-based XSS, Open Redirection, Cookie Manipulation, Link Manipulation, HTML Injection, etc. Version 1.8.139 contains a patch for the issue.

  • HIGH
  • NETWORK
  • LOW
  • UNCHANGED
  • REQUIRED
  • LOW
  • LOW
  • LOW

CWE-1321 - Prototype Pollution

Prototype pollution is one of the lesser-known vulnerabilities. It allows attackers to abuse the rules of JavaScript by injecting properties into the general object “Object” in JS. Modifying the prototype of “Object” affects the behavior of all objects in the entire app, potentially resulting in denial of service, arbitrary code execution, cross-site scripting, etc.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published