Glasshfish cross-side scripting in auth-realm/admin-realm/list-users
Product Line: Eclipse GlassFish
• Vulnerable Version: 7.0.15
• Summary: In Eclipse GlassFish version 7.0.15 is possible to perform Stored Cross-site scripting
attacks. Stored cross-site scripting vulnerabilities arise when user input is stored and later
embedded into the application's responses in an unsafe way. An attacker can use the
vulnerability to inject malicious JavaScript code into the application, which will execute within
the browser of any user who views the relevant application content.
• Prerequisites: The attacker must have the permissions to modify the configuration file within
the Operating System.
Step-by-step instructions and PoC
A remote user, that has the permissions to modify the configuration file through the Operating
System, can store malicious JavaScript code within the “groups” parameter. Successfully
exploitation of this vulnerability can cause the extraction of some information and/or the
execution of arbitrary HTTP Request in the context of victim's session.
Affected Endpoints
• URL: https://[IP]:[PORT]/management/domain/configs/config/server-config/security-
service/auth-realm/admin-realm/list-users
• Vulnerable Configuration Parameter: groups
Below there is the evidence with the vulnerability details and the payloads used
Payload used to exploit the vulnerability:
```
echo "user3;{SSHA256}qXV9vLHbkJRoMaJkGsNUrz5jSHDzMTR0CyFmZjUt8HJQVlIi2X8XaA==;asadmi
n<img src=x onerror=alert(1)>" >>
{PATH}/glassfish7/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/admin-keyfile
```
This first step consists of add the malicious user in the admin-keyfile configuration file, as reported
previously.
Below the evidence of the javascript code injection in the web pages that show the groups value:
(image)
Security Impact
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to extract some information or run arbitrary HTTP
Request in the context of victim's session.
Remediation Steps
In most situations where user-controllable data is copied into application responses, cross-site
scripting attacks can be prevented using two layers of defences:
- Input should be validated as strictly as possible on arrival, given the kind of content that it
is expected to contain. For example, personal names should consist of alphabetical and a
small range of typographical characters, and be relatively short; a year of birth should
consist of exactly four numerals; email addresses should match a well-defined regular
expression. Input which fails the validation should be rejected, not sanitized.
- User input should be HTML-encoded at any point where it is copied into application
responses. All HTML metacharacters, including < > " ' and =, should be replaced with the
corresponding HTML entities (< > etc).
In cases where the application's functionality allows users to author content using a restricted
subset of HTML tags and attributes (for example, blog comments which allow limited formatting
and linking), it is necessary to parse the supplied HTML to validate that it does not use any
dangerous syntax; this is a non-trivial task
<!--
Please, do not remove the line below. It will create a confidential issue that will be visible
only to you and the members of this project. Confidential issues are used to keep security
vulnerabilities private until they are sorted out.
Eclipse Projects follow Responsible Disclosure best practices: the initial report is made privately,
but with the full details being published once a patch has been made available (sometimes with
a delay to allow more time for the patches to be installed).
-->
issue