CVE-2006-4224 in Virtual War
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in calendar.php in Virtual War (VWar) 1.5.0 and earlier allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the year parameter. NOTE: The page parameter vector is covered by CVE-2006-4009.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/22/2017
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2006-4224 represents a classic cross-site scripting flaw within the Virtual War (VWar) web application version 1.5.0 and earlier. This vulnerability specifically targets the calendar.php script and exploits the year parameter to allow remote attackers to inject malicious web scripts or HTML content. The flaw falls under the broader category of CWE-79, which defines improper neutralization of input during web output, making it a fundamental web application security weakness that has persisted across numerous applications and frameworks.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from insufficient input validation and output sanitization within the calendar.php script. When users provide the year parameter, the application fails to properly sanitize or escape the input before incorporating it into the web page response. This allows attackers to inject malicious payloads that execute in the context of other users' browsers, potentially leading to session hijacking, credential theft, or unauthorized actions performed on behalf of victims. The vulnerability specifically affects the year parameter handling, where user-supplied data flows directly into HTML output without proper encoding or validation mechanisms.
From an operational perspective, this XSS vulnerability presents significant risks to the integrity and security of the VWar application environment. Attackers can leverage this flaw to execute arbitrary scripts in users' browsers, potentially compromising user sessions, stealing sensitive information, or redirecting users to malicious sites. The impact extends beyond individual user compromise to potential system-wide security degradation, especially if the application handles sensitive user data or administrative functions. The vulnerability's classification aligns with ATT&CK technique T1566.001, which covers the use of malicious content to compromise systems through web-based attacks.
The security implications of CVE-2006-4224 demonstrate the critical importance of input validation and output encoding in web applications. The vulnerability represents a failure in the application's defense-in-depth strategy, where proper sanitization should have been implemented at the point of data injection into web responses. This flaw exemplifies how simple parameter handling can create significant security risks when proper security controls are not implemented. Organizations using VWar 1.5.0 or earlier should immediately implement mitigations including input validation, output encoding, and proper parameter sanitization to prevent exploitation of this vulnerability. The presence of this vulnerability alongside CVE-2006-4009 for the page parameter vector indicates a broader pattern of insufficient input validation throughout the calendar functionality, suggesting a comprehensive review of all user input handling mechanisms within the application.