SA-CONTRIB-2014-117 – Hierarchical Select – Cross Site Scripting (XSS)

Description

The Hierarchical Select module provides a “hierarchical_select” form element, which is a greatly enhanced way for letting the user select items in a taxonomy. The module does not sanitize some of the user-supplied data before displaying it, leading to two Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities that may lead to a malicious user gaining full administrative access.

The first vulnerability is mitigated by the fact that the attacker must have a role with the “administer taxonomy” permission; specifically the attacker must be able to create or modify taxonomy terms and then modify the term title. Only Hierarchical Select field instances with the “Save term lineage” option enabled in the widget settings are vulnerable.

The second vulnerability is mitigated by the fact that an attacker must have a permission to administer fields on an entity type, for example the “administer taxonomy” permission to manage fields on taxonomy terms, the “administer users” permission to manage fields on users or the “administer content type” permission to manage fields on comments or nodes.

CVE identifier(s) issued

  • A CVE identifier will be requested, and added upon issuance, in accordance
    with Drupal Security Team processes.

Versions affected

  • Hierarchical Select 6.x versions prior to 6.x-3.9.

Drupal core is not affected. If you do not use the contributed Hierarchical Select module,
there is nothing you need to do.

Solution

Install the latest version:

After installing the latest version, clear all caches so that no malicious code will linger in any cached data.

Also see the Hierarchical Select project page.

Reported by

Fixed by

Coordinated by

Contact and More Information

The Drupal security team can be reached at security at drupal.org or via the contact form at https://www.drupal.org/contact.

Learn more about the Drupal Security team and their policies, writing secure code for Drupal, and securing your site.

Follow the Drupal Security Team on Twitter at https://twitter.com/drupalsecurity

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