CVE-2023-50722

XWiki Platform is a generic wiki platform. Starting in 2.3 and prior to versions 14.10.15, 15.5.2, and 15.7-rc-1, there is a reflected XSS or also direct remote code execution vulnerability in the code for displaying configurable admin sections. The code that can be passed through a URL parameter is only executed when the user who is visiting the crafted URL has edit right on at least one configuration section. While any user of the wiki could easily create such a section, this vulnerability doesnt require the attacker to have an account or any access on the wiki. It is sufficient to trick any admin user of the XWiki installation to visit the crafted URL. This vulnerability allows full remote code execution with programming rights and thus impacts the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the whole XWiki installation. This has been fixed in XWiki 14.10.15, 15.5.2 and 15.7RC1. The patch can be manually applied to the document XWiki.ConfigurableClass.

Weakness

The web application does not, or can not, sufficiently verify whether a well-formed, valid, consistent request was intentionally provided by the user who submitted the request.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, use anti-CSRF packages such as the OWASP CSRFGuard. [REF-330]
• Another example is the ESAPI Session Management control, which includes a component for CSRF. [REF-45]
• Use the “double-submitted cookie” method as described by Felten and Zeller:
• When a user visits a site, the site should generate a pseudorandom value and set it as a cookie on the user’s machine. The site should require every form submission to include this value as a form value and also as a cookie value. When a POST request is sent to the site, the request should only be considered valid if the form value and the cookie value are the same.
• Because of the same-origin policy, an attacker cannot read or modify the value stored in the cookie. To successfully submit a form on behalf of the user, the attacker would have to correctly guess the pseudorandom value. If the pseudorandom value is cryptographically strong, this will be prohibitively difficult.
• This technique requires Javascript, so it may not work for browsers that have Javascript disabled. [REF-331]

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/111.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/462.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/467.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/62.html

References

• https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/commit/5e14c8d08fd0c5b619833d35090b470aa4cb52b0
• https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/security/advisories/GHSA-cp3j-273x-3jxc
• https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-21167