This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Circles
Nextcloud Circles is an open source social network built for the nextcloud ecosystem. In affected versions the Nextcloud Circles application is vulnerable to a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability. Due the strict Content-Security-Policy shipped with Nextcloud, this issue is not exploitable on modern browsers supporting Content-Security-Policy. It is recommended that the Nextcloud Circles application is upgraded to 0.21.3, 0.20.10 or 0.19.14 to resolve this issue. As a workaround users may use a browser that has support for Content-Security-Policy. A notable exemption is Internet Explorer which does not support CSP properly. (2021-09-07, CVE-2021-32782)
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>