CVE-2017-14922 in Tine Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE
Stored XSS vulnerability via IMG element at "History" of Profile, Calendar, Tasks, and CRM in Tine 2.0 Community Edition before 2017.08.4 allows an authenticated user to inject JavaScript, which is mishandled during rendering by the application administrator and other users.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/30/2022
The CVE-2017-14922 vulnerability represents a critical stored cross-site scripting flaw within the Tine 2.0 Community Edition platform, specifically affecting the history sections of profile, calendar, tasks, and CRM modules. This vulnerability resides in the application's handling of image elements within stored data, creating a persistent security risk that can be exploited by authenticated users with minimal privileges. The flaw demonstrates a fundamental weakness in input validation and output encoding mechanisms, where user-supplied content containing malicious script tags is not properly sanitized before being rendered to other users. The vulnerability affects versions prior to 2017.08.4, indicating that this was a known issue that required immediate attention from the development team to prevent exploitation in production environments.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability occurs when an authenticated user places an image element with embedded JavaScript within the history sections of the aforementioned modules. When other users, particularly administrators, view these history sections, the application fails to properly escape or filter the malicious content, allowing the JavaScript to execute in the context of the victim's browser. This stored nature of the vulnerability means that the malicious payload persists in the database and can affect multiple users over time, making it particularly dangerous for administrative accounts that may have elevated privileges. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-79, which specifically addresses cross-site scripting flaws, and demonstrates poor input validation practices that violate secure coding principles.
The operational impact of CVE-2017-14922 extends beyond simple script execution, as it can enable attackers to perform a wide range of malicious activities including credential theft, session hijacking, data exfiltration, and privilege escalation. Administrative users who view the affected history sections become potential victims of this stored XSS attack, creating a vector for attackers to gain elevated access to the system. The vulnerability can be exploited to create persistent backdoors, manipulate application functionality, or redirect users to malicious websites. This attack vector represents a significant threat to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the Tine 2.0 platform, particularly in enterprise environments where administrative accounts hold sensitive data and system controls. The vulnerability's presence in multiple modules increases the attack surface and makes it more difficult to secure the application comprehensively.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2017-14922 should focus on immediate patching of the affected Tine 2.0 versions to 2017.08.4 or later, which would address the core input validation issues. Organizations should implement comprehensive output encoding for all user-supplied content, particularly within history sections and other stored data areas. The application should enforce strict content sanitization policies that remove or escape potentially dangerous elements such as img tags with javascript protocols. Security teams should consider implementing web application firewalls to detect and block suspicious content patterns, while also conducting regular security assessments to identify similar vulnerabilities in other modules. Additionally, user input validation should be strengthened through the implementation of Content Security Policy headers and regular security training for developers to prevent similar issues in future code development cycles. This vulnerability serves as a reminder of the critical importance of proper input validation and output encoding in preventing persistent XSS attacks, aligning with ATT&CK technique T1059.007 for command and scripting interpreter execution through web interfaces.