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Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Caldera Forms
The Caldera Forms WordPress plugin before 1.9.7 does not validate and escape the cf-api parameter before outputting it back in the response, leading to a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (2022-04-18, CVE-2022-0879)
The Caldera Forms WordPress plugin before 1.9.5 does not sanitise and escape the Form Name before outputting it in attributes, which could allow high privilege users to perform Cross-Site Scripting attacks even when the unfiltered_html capability is disallowed. (2021-12-13, CVE-2021-24896)
Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the Caldera Forms plugin before 1.6.0-rc.1 for WordPress allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via vectors involving (1) a greeting message, (2) the email transaction log, or (3) an imported form. (2018-04-20, CVE-2018-7747)
Why Cross-site Scripting can be dangerous
Cross site scripting is an attack where a web page executes code that is injected by an adversary. It usually appears, when users input is presented. This attack can be used to impersonate a user, take over control of the session, or even steal API keys.
The attack can be executed e.g. when you application injects the request parameter directly into the HTML code of the page returned to the user:
https://server.com/confirmation?message=Transaction+Complete
what results in:
<span>Confirmation: Transaction Complete</span>
In that case the message can be modified to become a valid Javascript code, e.g.:
https://server.com/confirmation?message=<script>dangerous javascript code here</script>
and it will be executed locally by the user's browser with full access to the user's personal application/browser data:
<span>Confirmation: <script>dangerous javascript code here</script></span>