CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-20208

Improper Neutralization of Alternate XSS Syntax

Published: Nov 21, 2023 | Modified: Nov 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
4.8
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
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A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco ISE could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to conduct an XSS attack against a user of the web-based management interface of an affected device.

Weakness

The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controlled input for alternate script syntax.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0 (including)3.0.0 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0-patch1 (including)3.0.0-patch1 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0-patch2 (including)3.0.0-patch2 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0-patch3 (including)3.0.0-patch3 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0-patch4 (including)3.0.0-patch4 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0-patch5 (including)3.0.0-patch5 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0-patch6 (including)3.0.0-patch6 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.0.0-patch7 (including)3.0.0-patch7 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.1 (including)3.1 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.1-patch1 (including)3.1-patch1 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.1-patch2 (including)3.1-patch2 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.1-patch3 (including)3.1-patch3 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.1-patch4 (including)3.1-patch4 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.1-patch5 (including)3.1-patch5 (including)
Identity_services_engineCisco3.2 (including)3.2 (including)

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.

References