@dependencytrack/frontend vulnerable to Persistent Cross-Site-Scripting via Vulnerability Details

Description

Description

Due to the common practice of providing vulnerability details in markdown format, the Dependency-Track frontend renders them using the JavaScript library Showdown. Showdown does not have any XSS countermeasures built in, and versions before 4.6.1 of the Dependency-Track frontend did not encode or sanitize Showdown's output. This made it possible for arbitrary JavaScript included in vulnerability details via HTML attributes to be executed in context of the frontend.

Impact

Actors with the VULNERABILITY_MANAGEMENT permission can exploit this weakness by creating or editing a custom vulnerability and providing XSS payloads in any of the following fields:

  • Description
  • Details
  • Recommendation
  • References

The payload will be executed for users with the VIEW_PORTFOLIO permission when browsing to the modified vulnerability's page, for example:

https://dtrack.example.com/vulnerabilities/INTERNAL/INT-jd8u-e8tl-8lwu

Alternatively, malicious JavaScript could be introduced via any of the vulnerability databases mirrored by Dependency-Track (NVD, GitHub Advisories, OSV, OSS Index, VulnDB). However, this attack vector is highly unlikely, and the team is not aware of any occurrence of this happening.

> Note
> The Vulnerability Details element of the Audit Vulnerabilities tab in the project view is not affected.

Patches

The issue has been fixed in frontend version 4.6.1.

Credit

Thanks to GitHub user Waterstraal for finding and responsibly disclosing the issue.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2022-10-25 20:22:01 UTC
Updated
2023-01-30 05:02:58 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2022-10-25 20:22:01 UTC
NVD published
2022-10-25

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.27% 50.01%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
5.4 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
Confidentiality (C:L)
Some sensitive info could get out, but not a total data dump.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Credits

  • Waterstraal (analyst)

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
npm @dependencytrack/frontend < 4.6.1 4.6.1

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence