A recent study revealed that the popular Book Store Management System (BSMS) v1. has a severe Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in its publisher parameter. This vulnerability, indexed as CVE-2022-45613, allows potential attackers to execute arbitrary web scripts or HTML code, resulting in possible unauthorized actions.

In this detailed long-read post, we will discuss the exploit and provide code snippets, original references, affected versions, and recommended mitigation steps.

Description

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a common web application vulnerability that enables attackers to inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by users. In the case of CVE-2022-45613, the impacted endpoint is /bsms_ci/index.php/book within the BSMS v1. application. The vulnerability lies in the publisher parameter, which fails to sanitize user inputs properly, leading to the execution of arbitrary scripts.

Exploit Details

An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary web scripts or HTML code by sending a specially crafted payload to the vulnerable endpoint. This can lead to various unauthorized actions, such as stealing user session cookies, redirecting users to malicious websites, or performing actions on their behalf.

Here is a sample code snippet demonstrating the attack

GET /bsms_ci/index.php/book?publisher=%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%27XSS%27%29%3C%2Fscript%3E HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-bsms.example.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5. (Windows NT 10.; Win64; x64; rv:63.) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=.9,*/*;q=.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: close
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
Cache-Control: max-age=

The above HTTP request attempts to inject a JavaScript 'alert' function in the publisher parameter. If successful, this will cause a pop-up message with the text 'XSS' to appear when a user accesses the affected page in their browser.

Affected Versions

Book Store Management System v1.

Original References

- CVE-2022-45613: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-45613
- BSMS v1. GitHub Repository: https://github.com/your_username/bsms_ci

Mitigation Steps

To mitigate this vulnerability, users are recommended to update their Book Store Management System to the latest available version, which has the necessary fixes implemented. Furthermore, implementing proper input validation and output encoding can help reduce the risk of XSS vulnerabilities in any web application.

In summary, the CVE-2022-45613 vulnerability allows attackers to execute arbitrary web scripts or HTML via a crafted payload injected into the BSMS v1. application's publisher parameter. Keep your software up to date and follow best coding practices to ensure your web applications are secure against such attacks.

Timeline

Published on: 01/18/2023 18:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 01/25/2023 19:28:00 UTC