This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-site Scripting occurrences in Scratch Addons
Scratch Addons is a WebExtension that supports both Chrome and Firefox. Scratch Addons before version 1.3.2 is vulnerable to DOM-based XSS. If the victim visited a specific website, the More Links addon of the Scratch Addons extension used incorrect regular expression which caused the HTML-escaped values to be unescaped, leading to XSS. Scratch Addons version 1.3.2 fixes the bug. The extension will be automatically updated by the browser. More Links addon can be disabled via the option of the extension. (2020-11-23, CVE-2020-26239)
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>