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Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Omero-figure
OMERO.web provides a web based client and plugin infrastructure. In versions prior to 5.11.0, a variety of templates do not perform proper sanitization through HTML escaping. Due to the lack of sanitization and use of ``jQuery.html()``, there are a whole host of cross-site scripting possibilities with specially crafted input to a variety of fields. This issue is patched in version 5.11.0. There are no known workarounds aside from upgrading. (2021-10-14, CVE-2021-41132)
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>