Jquery.terminal Cross-site Scripting

jQuery Terminal Emulator is a plugin for creating command line interpreters in your applications. Versions prior to 2.31.1 contain a low impact and limited cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. The code for XSS payload is always visible, but an attacker can use other techniques to hide the code the victim sees. If the application uses the `execHash` option and executes code from URL, the attacker can use this URL to execute their code. The scope is limited because the javascript attribute used is added to span tag, so no automatic execution like with `onerror` on images is possible. This issue is fixed in version 2.31.1. As a workaround, the user can use formatting that wrap whole user input and its no op. The code for this workaround is available in the GitHub Security Advisory. The fix will only work when user of the library is not using different formatters (e.g. to highlight code in different way). (2021-12-30, CVE-2021-43862)

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>