Underconstruction Cross-site Scripting

The underConstruction WordPress plugin before 1.21 does not sanitise or escape the "Display a custom page using your own HTML" setting before outputting it, allowing high privilege users to perform Cross-Site Scripting attacks even when the unfiletred_html capability is disallowed. (2022-06-20, CVE-2022-1896)

The underConstruction plugin <= 1.18 for WordPress echoes out the raw value of `$GLOBALS['PHP_SELF']` in the ucOptions.php file. On certain configurations including Apache+modPHP, this makes it possible to use it to perform a reflected Cross-Site Scripting attack by injecting malicious code in the request path. (2021-09-01, CVE-2021-39320)

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>