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Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Redcarpet
Redcarpet is a Ruby library for Markdown processing. In Redcarpet before version 3.5.1, there is an injection vulnerability which can enable a cross-site scripting attack. In affected versions no HTML escaping was being performed when processing quotes. This applies even when the `:escape_html` option was being used. This is fixed in version 3.5.1 by the referenced commit. (2021-01-11, CVE-2020-26298)
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>