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Cross site scripting vulnerability in ActionView

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Mar 19, 2020 in rails/rails • Updated Feb 3, 2023

Package

bundler actionview (RubyGems)

Affected versions

<= 5.2.4.1
>= 6.0.0, <= 6.0.2.1

Patched versions

5.2.4.2
6.0.2.2

Description

There is a possible cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in ActionView's JavaScript literal escape helpers. Views that use the j or escape_javascript methods may be susceptible to XSS attacks.

Impact

There is a possible XSS vulnerability in the j and escape_javascript methods in ActionView. These methods are used for escaping JavaScript string literals. Impacted code will look something like this:

<script>let a = `<%= j unknown_input %>`</script>

or

<script>let a = `<%= escape_javascript unknown_input %>`</script>

Releases

The 6.0.2.2 and 5.2.4.2 releases are available at the normal locations.

Workarounds

For those that can't upgrade, the following monkey patch may be used:

ActionView::Helpers::JavaScriptHelper::JS_ESCAPE_MAP.merge!(
  {
    "`" => "\\`",
    "$" => "\\$"
  }
)

module ActionView::Helpers::JavaScriptHelper
  alias :old_ej :escape_javascript
  alias :old_j :j

  def escape_javascript(javascript)
    javascript = javascript.to_s
    if javascript.empty?
      result = ""
    else
      result = javascript.gsub(/(\\|<\/|\r\n|\342\200\250|\342\200\251|[\n\r"']|[`]|[$])/u, JS_ESCAPE_MAP)
    end
    javascript.html_safe? ? result.html_safe : result
  end

  alias :j :escape_javascript
end

Patches

To aid users who aren't able to upgrade immediately we have provided patches for
the two supported release series. They are in git-am format and consist of a
single changeset.

Please note that only the 5.2 and 6.0 series are supported at present. Users
of earlier unsupported releases are advised to upgrade as soon as possible as we
cannot guarantee the continued availability of security fixes for unsupported
releases.

Credits

Thanks to Jesse Campos from Chef Secure

References

@tenderlove tenderlove published to rails/rails Mar 19, 2020
Reviewed Mar 19, 2020
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Mar 19, 2020
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Mar 19, 2020
Last updated Feb 3, 2023

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
High
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

EPSS score

0.195%
(57th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2020-5267

GHSA ID

GHSA-65cv-r6x7-79hv

Source code

No known source code

Credits

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