Ecosyste.ms: Advisories

Security Advisories: MDE2OlNlY3VyaXR5QWR2aXNvcnlHSFNBLTVjcDQteG1ydy01OXdm

XSS via JQLite DOM manipulation functions in AngularJS

Summary

XSS may be triggered in AngularJS applications that sanitize user-controlled HTML snippets before passing them to JQLite methods like JQLite.prepend, JQLite.after, JQLite.append, JQLite.replaceWith, JQLite.append, new JQLite and angular.element.

Description

JQLite (DOM manipulation library that's part of AngularJS) manipulates input HTML before inserting it to the DOM in jqLiteBuildFragment.

One of the modifications performed expands an XHTML self-closing tag.

If jqLiteBuildFragment is called (e.g. via new JQLite(aString)) with user-controlled HTML string that was sanitized (e.g. with DOMPurify), the transformation done by JQLite may modify some forms of an inert, sanitized payload into a payload containing JavaScript - and trigger an XSS when the payload is inserted into DOM.

This is similar to a bug in jQuery htmlPrefilter function that was fixed in 3.5.0.

Proof of concept

const inertPayload = `<div><style><style/><img src=x onerror="alert(1337)"/>` 

Note that the style element is not closed and <img would be a text node inside the style if inserted into the DOM as-is.
As such, some HTML sanitizers would leave the <img as is without processing it and stripping the onerror attribute.

angular.element(document).append(inertPayload);

This will alert, as <style/> will be replaced with <style></style> before adding it to the DOM, closing the style element early and reactivating img.

Patches

The issue is patched in JQLite bundled with angular 1.8.0. AngularJS users using JQuery should upgrade JQuery to 3.5.0, as a similar vulnerability affects jQuery <3.5.0.

Workarounds

Changing sanitizer configuration not to allow certain tag grouping (e.g. <option><style></option>) or inline style elements may stop certain exploitation vectors, but it's uncertain if all possible exploitation vectors would be covered. Upgrade of AngularJS to 1.8.0 is recommended.

References

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-mhp6-pxh8-r675
https://github.com/jquery/jquery/security/advisories/GHSA-gxr4-xjj5-5px2
https://github.com/jquery/jquery/security/advisories/GHSA-jpcq-cgw6-v4j6
https://blog.jquery.com/2020/04/10/jquery-3-5-0-released/
https://snyk.io/vuln/SNYK-JS-ANGULAR-570058

Permalink: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-5cp4-xmrw-59wf
JSON: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories/MDE2OlNlY3VyaXR5QWR2aXNvcnlHSFNBLTVjcDQteG1ydy01OXdm
Source: GitHub Advisory Database
Origin: Unspecified
Severity: Moderate
Classification: General
Published: over 4 years ago
Updated: about 2 years ago

CVSS Score: 5.0
CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

Identifiers: GHSA-5cp4-xmrw-59wf
References:

• https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisories/GHSA-5cp4-xmrw-59wf
• https://github.com/jquery/jquery/security/advisories/GHSA-gxr4-xjj5-5px2
• https://github.com/jquery/jquery/security/advisories/GHSA-jpcq-cgw6-v4j6
• https://blog.jquery.com/2020/04/10/jquery-3-5-0-released/
• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-mhp6-pxh8-r675
• https://snyk.io/vuln/SNYK-JS-ANGULAR-570058
• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-5cp4-xmrw-59wf

Repository: https://github.com/jquery/jquery
Blast Radius: 23.8

Affected Packages