An adversary inserts commands to perform cross-site scripting (XSS) actions in HTML attributes. Many filters do not adequately sanitize attributes against the presence of potentially dangerous commands even if they adequately sanitize tags. For example, dangerous expressions could be inserted into a style attribute in an anchor tag, resulting in the execution of malicious code when the resulting page is rendered. If a victim is tricked into viewing the rendered page the attack proceeds like a normal XSS attack, possibly resulting in the loss of sensitive cookies or other malicious activities.
Typical Severity
Medium
Relationships
The table below shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern. These relationships are defined as ChildOf and ParentOf, and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as CanFollow, PeerOf, and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar attack patterns that the user may want to explore.
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
Detailed Attack Pattern - A detailed level attack pattern in CAPEC provides a low level of detail, typically leveraging a specific technique and targeting a specific technology, and expresses a complete execution flow. Detailed attack patterns are more specific than meta attack patterns and standard attack patterns and often require a specific protection mechanism to mitigate actual attacks. A detailed level attack pattern often will leverage a number of different standard level attack patterns chained together to accomplish a goal.
Detailed Attack Pattern - A detailed level attack pattern in CAPEC provides a low level of detail, typically leveraging a specific technique and targeting a specific technology, and expresses a complete execution flow. Detailed attack patterns are more specific than meta attack patterns and standard attack patterns and often require a specific protection mechanism to mitigate actual attacks. A detailed level attack pattern often will leverage a number of different standard level attack patterns chained together to accomplish a goal.
Detailed Attack Pattern - A detailed level attack pattern in CAPEC provides a low level of detail, typically leveraging a specific technique and targeting a specific technology, and expresses a complete execution flow. Detailed attack patterns are more specific than meta attack patterns and standard attack patterns and often require a specific protection mechanism to mitigate actual attacks. A detailed level attack pattern often will leverage a number of different standard level attack patterns chained together to accomplish a goal.
The target application must fail to adequately sanitize HTML attributes against the presence of dangerous commands.
Resources Required
The attacker must trick the victim into following a crafted link to a vulnerable server or view a web post where the dangerous commands are executed.
Mitigations
Design: Use libraries and templates that minimize unfiltered input.
Implementation: Normalize, filter and white list all input including that which is not expected to have any scripting content.
Implementation: The victim should configure the browser to minimize active content from untrusted sources.
Related Weaknesses
A Related Weakness relationship associates a weakness with this attack pattern. Each association implies a weakness that must exist for a given attack to be successful. If multiple weaknesses are associated with the attack pattern, then any of the weaknesses (but not necessarily all) may be present for the attack to be successful. Each related weakness is identified by a CWE identifier.
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Page Last Updated or Reviewed:
September 30, 2019
Use of the Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification dictionary and classification taxonomy, and the associated references from this website, are subject to the Terms of Use. For more information, please email capec@mitre.org.
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