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XWiki Platform's Groovy jobs check the wrong author, allowing remote code execution

Critical severity GitHub Reviewed Published Aug 23, 2023 in xwiki/xwiki-platform • Updated Nov 9, 2023

Package

maven com.xpn.xwiki.platform.plugins:xwiki-plugin-scheduler (Maven)

Affected versions

>= 1.3

Patched versions

None
maven org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-scheduler-api (Maven)
< 14.10.9
>= 15.0-rc-1, < 15.4-rc-1
14.10.9
15.4-rc-1

Description

Impact

XWiki supports scheduled jobs that contain Groovy scripts. Currently, the job checks the content author of the job for programming right. However, modifying or adding a job script to a document doesn't modify the content author. Together with a CSRF vulnerability in the job scheduler, this can be exploited for remote code execution by an attacker with edit right on the wiki.

For successful exploitation, the needs to have edit right on a document whose content has last been changed by a user with programming right. This could be the user profile for users created by admins. In this document, the attacker can create an object of class XWiki.SchedulerJobClass using the object editor. By setting job class to com.xpn.xwiki.plugin.scheduler.GroovyJob, cron expression to 0 0/5 * * * ? and job script to services.logging.getLogger("foo").error("Job content executed"), the attacker can create a job. Now this job just needs to be triggered or scheduled. This can be achieved by embedding an image with the following XWiki syntax in any document that is visited by an admin: [[image:path:/xwiki/bin/view/Scheduler/?do=trigger&which=Attacker.Document]] where Attacker.Document is the document that has been prepared by the attacker. If the attack is successful, an error log entry with "Job content executed" will be produced.

Patches

This vulnerability has been patched in XWiki 14.10.9 and 15.4RC1.

Workarounds

There is no workaround.

References

References

@surli surli published to xwiki/xwiki-platform Aug 23, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Aug 23, 2023
Reviewed Aug 23, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Aug 24, 2023
Last updated Nov 9, 2023

Severity

Critical

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
Low
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

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:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

0.315%
(71st percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-40573

GHSA ID

GHSA-8xhr-x3v8-rghj

Source code

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