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Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Profilegrid
The ProfileGrid WordPress plugin before 5.1.1 does not sanitise and escape a parameter before outputting it back in the page, leading to a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (2022-11-14, CVE-2022-3578)
The ProfileGrid – User Profiles, Memberships, Groups and Communities WordPress plugin is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting due to insufficient escaping via the pm_user_avatar and pm_cover_image parameters found in the ~/admin/class-profile-magic-admin.php file which allows attackers with authenticated user access, such as subscribers, to inject arbitrary web scripts into their profile, in versions up to and including 1.2.7. (2022-01-18, CVE-2022-0233)
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>