Xperience Cross-site Scripting

The Kentico Xperience CMS version 13.0 – 13.0.43 is vulnerable to a persistent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability (also known as Stored or Second-Order XSS). Persistent XSS vulnerabilities occur when the application stores and retrieves client supplied data without proper handling of dangerous content. This type of XSS vulnerability is exploited by submitting malicious script content to the application which is then retrieved and executed by other application users. The attacker could exploit this to conduct a range of attacks against users of the affected application such as session hijacking, account take over and accessing sensitive data. (2021-12-03, CVE-2021-43991)

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>