rails-html-sanitizer has XSS vulnerability with certain configurations

Summary

There is a possible XSS vulnerability with certain configurations of Rails::HTML::Sanitizer 1.6.0 when used with Rails >= 7.1.0.

• Versions affected: 1.6.0
• Not affected: < 1.6.0
• Fixed versions: 1.6.1

Impact

A possible XSS vulnerability with certain configurations of Rails::HTML::Sanitizer may allow an attacker to inject content if HTML5 sanitization is enabled and the application developer has overridden the sanitizer's allowed tags in the following way:

• the "math" and "style" elements are both explicitly allowed

Code is only impacted if Rails is configured to use HTML5 sanitization, please see documentation for config.action_view.sanitizer_vendor and config.action_text.sanitizer_vendor for more information on these configuration options.

The default configuration is to disallow these elements. Code is only impacted if allowed tags are being overridden. Applications may be doing this in a few different ways:

1. using application configuration to configure Action View sanitizers' allowed tags:

# In config/application.rb
config.action_view.sanitized_allowed_tags = ["math", "style"]

see https://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html#configuring-action-view

2. using a :tags option to the Action View helper sanitize:

<%= sanitize @comment.body, tags: ["math", "style"] %>

see https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/SanitizeHelper.html#method-i-sanitize

3. setting Rails::HTML5::SafeListSanitizer class attribute allowed_tags:

# class-level option
Rails::HTML5::SafeListSanitizer.allowed_tags = ["math", "style"]

(note that this class may also be referenced as Rails::Html::SafeListSanitizer)

4. using a :tags options to the Rails::HTML5::SafeListSanitizer instance method sanitize:

# instance-level option
Rails::HTML5::SafeListSanitizer.new.sanitize(@article.body, tags: ["math", "style"])

(note that this class may also be referenced as Rails::Html::SafeListSanitizer)

5. setting ActionText::ContentHelper module attribute allowed_tags:

ActionText::ContentHelper.allowed_tags = ["math", "style"]

All users overriding the allowed tags by any of the above mechanisms to include both "math" and "style" should either upgrade or use one of the workarounds.

Workarounds

Any one of the following actions will work around this issue:

• Remove "math" or "style" from the overridden allowed tags,
• Or, downgrade sanitization to HTML4 (see documentation for config.action_view.sanitizer_vendor and config.action_text.sanitizer_vendor for more information).

References

• CWE - CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (4.9)
• Original report: https://hackerone.com/reports/2519941

Credit

This vulnerability was responsibly reported by So Sakaguchi (mokusou) and taise.