This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Elasticsearch X-pack
X-Pack Machine Learning versions before 6.2.4 and 5.6.9 had a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. If an attacker is able to inject data into an index that has a ML job running against it, then when another user views the results of the ML job it could allow the attacker to obtain sensitive information from or perform destructive actions on behalf of that other ML user. (2018-09-19, CVE-2018-3824)
X-Pack Machine Learning versions before 6.2.4 and 5.6.9 had a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. Users with manage_ml permissions could create jobs containing malicious data as part of their configuration that could allow the attacker to obtain sensitive information from or perform destructive actions on behalf of other ML users viewing the results of the jobs. (2018-09-19, CVE-2018-3823)
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>