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Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Fluid

TYPO3 Fluid before versions 2.0.8, 2.1.7, 2.2.4, 2.3.7, 2.4.4, 2.5.11 and 2.6.10 is vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting. Three XSS vulnerabilities have been detected in Fluid: 1. TagBasedViewHelper allowed XSS through maliciously crafted additionalAttributes arrays by creating keys with attribute-closing quotes followed by HTML. When rendering such attributes, TagBuilder would not escape the keys. 2. ViewHelpers which used the CompileWithContentArgumentAndRenderStatic trait, and which declared escapeOutput = false, would receive the content argument in unescaped format. 3. Subclasses of AbstractConditionViewHelper would receive the then and else arguments in unescaped format. Update to versions 2.0.8, 2.1.7, 2.2.4, 2.3.7, 2.4.4, 2.5.11 or 2.6.10 of this typo3fluid/fluid package that fix the problem described. More details are available in the linked advisory. (2020-11-17, CVE-2020-26216)

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>

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