CVE-2020-5283

ViewVC before versions 1.1.28 and 1.2.1 has a XSS vulnerability in CVS show_subdir_lastmod support. The impact of this vulnerability is mitigated by the need for an attacker to have commit privileges to a CVS repository exposed by an otherwise trusted ViewVC instance that also has the show_subdir_lastmod feature enabled. 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. This vulnerability is patched in versions 1.2.1 and 1.1.28.

Weakness

The product receives input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special characters such as “<”, “>”, and “&” that could be interpreted as web-scripting elements when they are sent to a downstream component that processes web pages.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use and specify an output encoding that can be handled by the downstream component that is reading the output. Common encodings include ISO-8859-1, UTF-7, and UTF-8. When an encoding is not specified, a downstream component may choose a different encoding, either by assuming a default encoding or automatically inferring which encoding is being used, which can be erroneous. When the encodings are inconsistent, the downstream component might treat some character or byte sequences as special, even if they are not special in the original encoding. Attackers might then be able to exploit this discrepancy and conduct injection attacks; they even might be able to bypass protection mechanisms that assume the original encoding is also being used by the downstream component.
• The problem of inconsistent output encodings often arises in web pages. If an encoding is not specified in an HTTP header, web browsers often guess about which encoding is being used. This can open up the browser to subtle XSS attacks.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/18.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/193.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/32.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/86.html

References

• https://github.com/viewvc/viewvc/commit/ad0f966e9a997b17d853a6972ea283d4dcd70fa8
• https://github.com/viewvc/viewvc/issues/211
• https://github.com/viewvc/viewvc/security/advisories/GHSA-xpxf-fvqv-7mfg
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/2Q2STF2MKT24HXZ3YZIU7CN6F6QM67I5/
• https://github.com/viewvc/viewvc/commit/ad0f966e9a997b17d853a6972ea283d4dcd70fa8
• https://github.com/viewvc/viewvc/issues/211
• https://github.com/viewvc/viewvc/security/advisories/GHSA-xpxf-fvqv-7mfg
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/2Q2STF2MKT24HXZ3YZIU7CN6F6QM67I5/