Summary

Semantic MediaWiki vulnerable to stored XSS through wikitext via improper use of non-reserved data attributes

Advisory details

Summary

The SemanticMediaWiki extension inserts the unsanitized value of a data attribute into the DOM as HTML, allowing for stored XSS through wikitext.

Details

In ext.smw.js, the data-subtab attribute of all elements with the smw-subtab class is parsed as JSON and appended to the innerHTML of the element: https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/62f1fa765b626e21d88999b97a3e8029db9fd385/res/smw/ext.smw.js#L37-L42 However, most data attributes (except for reserved ones) like data-subtab can be used in wikitext. Therefore, it is possible to insert arbitrary HTML and JS through wikitext. The decoded (" will turn to &quot;, but it will be decoded when it is retrieved through .dataset) value of the data-subtab attribute in the payload is "<img src='' onerror=alert(1)>". This is valid JSON and returns a string with <img src='' onerror=alert(1)> when being decoded.

PoC

  1. Create a page with the following contents:
{{#tag:div|
|class=smw-subtab
|data-subtab=""<img src='' onerror=alert(1)>""
}}
  1. Visit the page
image image

Impact

Arbitrary HTML can be inserted into the DOM by any user with the edit right, allowing for JavaScript to be executed.

References