Pannellum Cross-site Scripting

In Pannellum from 2.5.0 through 2.5.4 URLs were not sanitized for data URIs (or vbscript:), allowing for potential XSS attacks. Such an attack would require a user to click on a hot spot to execute and would require an attacker-provided configuration. The most plausible potential attack would be if pannellum.htm was hosted on a domain that shared cookies with the targeted site's user authentication; an <iframe> could then be embedded on the attacker's site using pannellum.htm from the targeted site, which would allow the attacker to potentially access information from the targeted site as the authenticated user (or worse if the targeted site did not have adequate CSRF protections) if the user clicked on a hot spot in the attacker's embedded panorama viewer. This was patched in version 2.5.5. (2019-11-22, CVE-2019-16763)

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>