OpenProject is the leading open source project management software. OpenProject utilizes tablesorter inside of the Cost Report feature. This dependency, when misconfigured, can lead to Stored XSS via {icon} substitution in table header values. This attack requires the permissions Edit work packages as well as Add attachments. A project admin could attempt to escalate their privileges by sending this XSS to a System Admin. Otherwise, if a full System Admin is required, then this attack is significantly less impactful. By utilizing a tickets attachment, you can store javascript in the application itself and bypass the applications CSP policy to achieve Stored XSS. This vulnerability has been patched in version(s) 14.1.0, 14.0.2 and 13.4.2.
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.
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