CVE-2020-15118 – wagtail

Package

Manager: pip
Name: wagtail
Vulnerable Version: >=2.8rc1 <2.9.3 || >=0 <2.7.4

Severity

Level: High

CVSS v3.1: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

CVSS v4.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:H/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

EPSS: 0.00595 pctl0.68376

Details

Cross-Site Scripting in Wagtail ### Impact When a form page type is made available to Wagtail editors through the `wagtail.contrib.forms` app, and the page template is built using Django's standard form rendering helpers such as `form.as_p` ([as directed in the documentation](https://docs.wagtail.io/en/stable/reference/contrib/forms/index.html#usage)), any HTML tags used within a form field's help text will be rendered unescaped in the page. Allowing HTML within help text is [an intentional design decision](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/models/fields/#django.db.models.Field.help_text) by Django; however, as a matter of policy Wagtail does not allow editors to insert arbitrary HTML by default, as this could potentially be used to carry out cross-site scripting attacks, including privilege escalation. This functionality should therefore not have been made available to editor-level users. The vulnerability is not exploitable by an ordinary site visitor without access to the Wagtail admin. ### Patches Patched versions have been released as Wagtail 2.7.4 (for the LTS 2.7 branch) and Wagtail 2.9.3 (for the current 2.9 branch). In these versions, help text will be escaped to prevent the inclusion of HTML tags. Site owners who wish to re-enable the use of HTML within help text (and are willing to accept the risk of this being exploited by editors) may set `WAGTAILFORMS_HELP_TEXT_ALLOW_HTML = True` in their configuration settings. ### Workarounds Site owners who are unable to upgrade to the new versions can secure their form page templates by [rendering forms field-by-field as per Django's documentation](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/topics/forms/#looping-over-the-form-s-fields), but omitting the `|safe` filter when outputting the help text. ### Acknowledgements Many thanks to Timothy Bautista for reporting this issue. ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * Visit Wagtail's [support channels](https://docs.wagtail.io/en/stable/support.html) * Email us at [security@wagtail.io](mailto:security@wagtail.io) (if you wish to send encrypted email, the public key ID is `0x6ba1e1a86e0f8ce8`)

Metadata

Created: 2020-07-20T17:50:30Z
Modified: 2024-11-19T15:50:10Z
Source: https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2020/07/GHSA-2473-9hgq-j7xw/GHSA-2473-9hgq-j7xw.json
CWE IDs: ["CWE-79"]
Alternative ID: GHSA-2473-9hgq-j7xw
Finding: F425
Auto approve: 1