CVE-2023-1892 Scanner

Sidekiq is a background job processing library popular among Ruby developers known for its reliability and scalability. It is employed by various organizations to manage and process background tasks, optimizing both the performance and responsiveness of their applications. The software integrates seamlessly with Rails and other applications, providing developers with a robust tool to handle asynchronous processing efficiently. Admin panels in Sidekiq offer critical insights and management capabilities, allowing users to oversee job execution and system status. Being integral to workflow management, maintaining secure access to these admin panels is essential to prevent unauthorized access. Nevertheless, the ubiquity and central role of such tools can also make them targets for security vulnerabilities if not properly secured.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a type of security vulnerability often found in web applications, where an attacker can inject malicious scripts into content from otherwise trusted websites. The detected XSS vulnerability in Sidekiq allows attackers to inject harmful code into the admin panel, which can be executed when the panel is accessed by a legitimate user. This could potentially compromise sensitive information or the security integrity of the system. The vulnerability occurs when user input is improperly sanitized when displayed in the UI. Such vulnerabilities can be severe, allowing attackers to perform arbitrary actions on users' behalf or steal session information. Addressing these vulnerabilities typically involves correctly validating and encoding user inputs.

The vulnerability identified in Sidekiq results from inadequate input validation within certain admin panel endpoints. Specifically, the issue occurs due to the presence of "period" parameters in dangerous paths such as "/metrics" and its subpaths. These paths are potentially vulnerable to injection attacks if they process and render input data directly. The injection is facilitated by sending maliciously crafted URLs containing payloads like "<img/src/onerror=alert(document.domain)>" which triggers alert script execution within the browser. Addressing this requires conscientious coding practices that include filtering and escaping user inputs before rendering them to the user interface.

Exploiting this vulnerability could allow attackers to execute arbitrary scripts in users' browsers who access the compromised admin panel. This could lead to the theft of session cookies, enabling unauthorized access, hijacking sessions, and potentially exfiltrating sensitive user data. Additionally, such vulnerabilities might enable attackers to manipulate web page content viewed by the administrator or other users, creating opportunities for deceptive attacks like phishing. In a worst-case scenario, an attacker could utilize XSS to propagate malware or redirect users to harmful sites.

REFERENCES

• https://huntr.com/bounties/e35e5653-c429-4fb8-94a3-cbc123ae4777
• https://github.com/sidekiq/sidekiq/commit/458fdf74176a9881478c48dc5cf0269107b22214
• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-1892