Joomla! "searchword" XSS Vulnerability

Saturday, 13 October 2007

Vendor: Joomla

Description:
MustLive has discovered a vulnerability in Joomla!, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting attacks.

Input passed to the "searchword" parameter in index.php (when "option" is set to "com_search") is not properly sanitised before being returned to the user. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary HTML and script code in a user's browser session in context of an affected site.

Successful exploitation requires that the victim changes the number of search results in a drop-down box, after having clicked on the malicious link.

The vulnerability is confirmed in version 1.0.13. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution:
Edit the source code to ensure that input is properly sanitised.

Provided and/or discovered by:
MustLive

Original Advisories:
http://securityvulns.ru/Rdocument919.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/27196/