This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Nbdime
nbdime provides tools for diffing and merging of Jupyter Notebooks. In affected versions a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) issue exists within the Jupyter-owned nbdime project. It appears that when reading the file name and path from disk, the extension does not sanitize the string it constructs before returning it to be displayed. The diffNotebookCheckpoint function within nbdime causes this issue. When attempting to display the name of the local notebook (diffNotebookCheckpoint), nbdime appears to simply append .ipynb to the name of the input file. The NbdimeWidget is then created, and the base string is passed through to the request API function. From there, the frontend simply renders the HTML tag and anything along with it. Users are advised to patch to the most recent version of the affected product. (2021-11-03, CVE-2021-41134)
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>