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Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Polarion Alm
A vulnerability has been identified in Polarion ALM (All versions < V21 R2 P2), Polarion WebClient for SVN (All versions). A cross-site scripting is present due to improper neutralization of data sent to the web page through the SVN WebClient in the affected product. An attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary code and extract sensitive information by sending a specially crafted link to users with administrator privileges. (2022-03-08, CVE-2021-44478)
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>