CVE-2005-1010 in Comersus Cart
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Comersus Cart 6 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the account username.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/31/2019
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2005-1010 represents a critical cross-site scripting flaw within Comersus Cart 6, a web-based e-commerce platform that was widely deployed in retail environments during the early 2000s. This security weakness resides in the application's handling of user account data, specifically within the username field that is processed during account creation and management operations. The flaw allows malicious actors to inject arbitrary web scripts or HTML code into the application's response, which then gets executed in the context of other users' browsers who access the compromised account information. This vulnerability type falls under the CWE-79 category of Cross-Site Scripting, which is classified as a fundamental web application security weakness that has been consistently identified as one of the top ten web application security risks by the OWASP Foundation.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs when an attacker registers or modifies an account username containing malicious script code that is not properly sanitized or escaped before being rendered in the web application's user interface. When other users view the affected account information, their browsers execute the injected code, potentially leading to session hijacking, credential theft, or redirection to malicious websites. The attack vector is particularly dangerous because it leverages legitimate application functionality to deliver malicious content, making it difficult to distinguish between benign and malicious user interactions. According to ATT&CK framework category T1531, this vulnerability enables adversaries to perform persistent access and data exfiltration through compromised user sessions, while the technique aligns with T1566 which describes social engineering approaches that exploit web application vulnerabilities.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple script injection, as it can lead to complete compromise of user sessions and potentially the entire web application infrastructure. Attackers can leverage this flaw to steal customer credentials, manipulate shopping cart contents, modify account details, and gain unauthorized access to sensitive customer information. The vulnerability affects the integrity and confidentiality of the e-commerce platform, potentially exposing thousands of customer accounts to unauthorized access. Organizations using Comersus Cart 6 were particularly vulnerable because the application did not implement proper input validation or output encoding mechanisms to prevent malicious code from being executed in the browser context. The flaw demonstrates a critical failure in the application's security architecture, as it represents a lack of proper sanitization of user-supplied data before rendering it in web pages, which aligns with the broader category of insecure data handling practices described in CWE-20 and CWE-116.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2005-1010 require immediate implementation of input validation and output encoding measures to prevent malicious code injection. Organizations should implement strict sanitization of all user-supplied data, particularly in fields that are rendered in web interfaces, ensuring that special characters are properly escaped or removed before processing. The application should employ comprehensive input validation that rejects or filters out potentially dangerous script characters and sequences. Additionally, implementing Content Security Policy headers can provide an additional layer of protection by restricting the sources from which scripts can be loaded. Security patches should be applied immediately to upgrade to versions of Comersus Cart that address this vulnerability, while organizations should conduct thorough security assessments of their web applications to identify similar weaknesses in other components. The remediation process should also include regular security testing, including dynamic application security testing and manual penetration testing to ensure that similar vulnerabilities are not present in other parts of the application.