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Security Advisories: MDE2OlNlY3VyaXR5QWR2aXNvcnlHSFNBLTI0NzMtOWhncS1qN3h3

Cross-Site Scripting in Wagtail

Impact

When a form page type is made available to Wagtail editors through the wagtail.contrib.forms app, and the page template is built using Django's standard form rendering helpers such as form.as_p (as directed in the documentation), any HTML tags used within a form field's help text will be rendered unescaped in the page. Allowing HTML within help text is an intentional design decision by Django; however, as a matter of policy Wagtail does not allow editors to insert arbitrary HTML by default, as this could potentially be used to carry out cross-site scripting attacks, including privilege escalation. This functionality should therefore not have been made available to editor-level users.

The vulnerability is not exploitable by an ordinary site visitor without access to the Wagtail admin.

Patches

Patched versions have been released as Wagtail 2.7.4 (for the LTS 2.7 branch) and Wagtail 2.9.3 (for the current 2.9 branch). In these versions, help text will be escaped to prevent the inclusion of HTML tags. Site owners who wish to re-enable the use of HTML within help text (and are willing to accept the risk of this being exploited by editors) may set WAGTAILFORMS_HELP_TEXT_ALLOW_HTML = True in their configuration settings.

Workarounds

Site owners who are unable to upgrade to the new versions can secure their form page templates by rendering forms field-by-field as per Django's documentation, but omitting the |safe filter when outputting the help text.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Timothy Bautista for reporting this issue.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

Permalink: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-2473-9hgq-j7xw
JSON: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories/MDE2OlNlY3VyaXR5QWR2aXNvcnlHSFNBLTI0NzMtOWhncS1qN3h3
Source: GitHub Advisory Database
Origin: Unspecified
Severity: High
Classification: General
Published: over 4 years ago
Updated: 3 months ago


CVSS Score: 5.7
CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

EPSS Percentage: 0.00108
EPSS Percentile: 0.44542

Identifiers: GHSA-2473-9hgq-j7xw, CVE-2020-15118
References: Repository: https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail
Blast Radius: 18.8

Affected Packages

pypi:wagtail
Dependent packages: 200
Dependent repositories: 1,955
Downloads: 268,165 last month
Affected Version Ranges: >= 2.8rc1, < 2.9.3, < 2.7.4
Fixed in: 2.9.3, 2.7.4
All affected versions: 0.3.1, 0.4.1, 0.8.1, 0.8.2, 0.8.3, 0.8.4, 0.8.5, 0.8.6, 0.8.7, 0.8.8, 0.8.9, 0.8.10, 1.3.1, 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 1.4.3, 1.4.4, 1.4.5, 1.4.6, 1.5.1, 1.5.2, 1.5.3, 1.6.1, 1.6.2, 1.6.3, 1.8.1, 1.8.2, 1.9.1, 1.10.1, 1.11.1, 1.12.1, 1.12.2, 1.12.3, 1.12.4, 1.12.5, 1.12.6, 1.13.1, 1.13.2, 1.13.3, 1.13.4, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.6.1, 2.6.2, 2.6.3, 2.7.1, 2.7.2, 2.7.3, 2.7.4, 2.8.1, 2.8.2, 2.9.1, 2.9.2
All unaffected versions: 2.9.3, 2.10.1, 2.10.2, 2.11.1, 2.11.2, 2.11.3, 2.11.4, 2.11.5, 2.11.6, 2.11.7, 2.11.8, 2.11.9, 2.12.1, 2.12.2, 2.12.3, 2.12.4, 2.12.5, 2.12.6, 2.13.1, 2.13.2, 2.13.3, 2.13.4, 2.13.5, 2.14.1, 2.14.2, 2.15.1, 2.15.2, 2.15.3, 2.15.4, 2.15.5, 2.15.6, 2.16.1, 2.16.2, 2.16.3, 3.0.1, 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, 4.1.2, 4.1.3, 4.1.4, 4.1.5, 4.1.6, 4.1.7, 4.1.8, 4.1.9, 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.4, 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3, 5.0.4, 5.0.5, 5.1.1, 5.1.2, 5.1.3, 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3, 5.2.4, 5.2.5, 5.2.6, 5.2.7, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.0.4, 6.0.5, 6.0.6, 6.1.1, 6.1.2, 6.1.3, 6.2.1, 6.2.2, 6.2.3, 6.3.1, 6.3.2