CVE-2016-3670 Stored Cross Site Scripting in Liferay CE

1. Vulnerability Properties

Title: Stored Cross-Site Scripting Liferay CE
CVE ID: CVE-2016-3670
CVSSv3 Base Score: 4.6 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N)
Vendor: Liferay Inc
Products: Liferay
Advisory Release Date: 27 May 2016
Advisory URL: https://labs.integrity.pt/advisories/cve-2016-3670
Credits: Discovery by Fernando Câmara <fbc[at]integrity.pt>

2. Vulnerability Summary

Liferay is vulnerable to a stored XSS when an user is created with an malicious payload on the FirstName field.
The javascript payload is executed when another user tries to use the profile search section.

3. Technical Details

An XSS vulnerability was found on the Profile Search functionality, accessible through User -> My Profile -> Search.  An attacker can set a malicious javascript payload on his  First Name affecting anyone who performs a search using a keyword present on his profile.

The exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to an effective way to grab cookies (stealing sessions) from anyone that uses that search component.

Exploitation Request: (User Registration with an malicious FirstName field)

POST /liferay/web/guest/home?p_p_id=58&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=
maximized&p_p_mode=view&_58_struts_action=%2Flogin%2Fcreate_account

Data:

_58_firstName=%22%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%27xss%27%29%3C%2

The vulnerability is located on the users.jsp and as shown below the origin is the lack of validation of user input:

line 64: <a data-value="<%= curUserName %>" href="javascript:;">

4. Vulnerable Versions

< 6.2 CE GA6

5. Solution

Update to version 7.0.0 CE RC1

6. Vulnerability Timeline

• 21/Jan/16  - Bug reported to Liferay
• 22/Mar/16 - Bug verified by vendor
• 22/Mar/16 - Bug fixed by vendor
• 27/May/16 - Advisory released

7. References

• https://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-62387
• http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-3670