Software Engineering Institute

CourseForum's ProjectForum software fails to sanitize all input fields. As a result, cross site scripting (XSS) attacks can be conducted. By default, a non-credentialed user can create a new webpage on a ProjectForum wiki. Each ProjectForum wiki page contains a "more" object which allows a listing of objects associated with the ProjectForum wiki webpage. An attacker can inject javascript code that will be run each time the ProjectForum wiki webpage is accessed by renaming one of the ProjectForum wiki associated objects and inserting javascript code as the name.

For example, the following javascript code can be injected into the listing of objects variable:

<IMG "><SCRIPT>alert("Vulnerable")</SCRIPT>">

An attacker with access to the ProjectForum wiki can conduct a cross site scripting attack, which could be used to result in information leakage, privilege escalation, and/or denial of service.

We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem.

Restrict access

As a general good security practice, only allow connections from trusted hosts and networks. Note that restricting access does not prevent XSS or CSRF attacks since the attack comes as an HTTP request from a legitimate user's host. Restricting access would prevent an attacker from accessing a ProjectForum wiki using stolen credentials from a blocked network location.