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org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-office-importer vulnerable to arbitrary server side file writing from account through office converter

Critical severity GitHub Reviewed Published Oct 25, 2023 in xwiki/xwiki-platform • Updated Nov 12, 2023

Package

maven org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-office-importer (Maven)

Affected versions

>= 3.5-milestone-1, < 14.10.8
>= 15.0-rc-1, < 15.3-rc-1

Patched versions

14.10.8
15.3-rc-1

Description

Impact

Triggering the office converter with a specially crafted file name allows writing the attachment's content to an attacker-controlled location on the server as long as the Java process has write access to that location. In particular in the combination with attachment moving, a feature introduced in XWiki 14.0, this is easy to reproduce but it also possible to reproduce in versions as old as XWiki 3.5 by uploading the attachment through the REST API which doesn't remove / or \ from the filename. As the mime type of the attachment doesn't matter for the exploitation, this could e.g., be used to replace the jar-file of an extension which would allow executing arbitrary Java code and thus impact the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the XWiki installation. To reproduce the issue on versions since XWiki 14.0, execute the following steps:

  1. Activate the office server
  2. Upload an arbitrary file with the extension .doc, e.g., to your user profile (you can use a regular plain text file, only the extension matters).
  3. Use the attachment move feature to rename the file to ../../../../../tmp/Hello from XWiki.txt where the latter part is the location of a file you want to write on the server. The number of ../ depends on the directory depth, the provided example should work on Linux with the demo distribution.
  4. Click the "preview" link to trigger the office converter

For information how to reproduce on older versions, see the Jira issue.

To the best of our knowledge, this attack is not possible when the office conversion process doesn't run as the code fails before the file is written.

Patches

This vulnerability has been patched in XWiki 14.10.8 and 15.3RC1.

Workarounds

There are no known workarounds apart from disabling the office converter.

References

References

@michitux michitux published to xwiki/xwiki-platform Oct 25, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Oct 25, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Oct 25, 2023
Reviewed Oct 25, 2023
Last updated Nov 12, 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
None
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:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

0.166%
(54th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-37913

GHSA ID

GHSA-vcvr-v426-3m3m

Source code

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