CVE-2023-48534 in Experience Manager
Summary
by MITRE • 12/15/2023
Adobe Experience Manager versions 6.5.18 and earlier are affected by a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability that could be abused by a low-privileged attacker to inject malicious scripts into vulnerable form fields. Malicious JavaScript may be executed in a victim’s browser when they browse to the page containing the vulnerable field.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/06/2024
Adobe Experience Manager represents a comprehensive content management platform widely deployed across enterprise environments for digital experience management. The platform serves as a central hub for creating, managing, and delivering digital content across multiple channels while providing robust workflow automation and user management capabilities. Organizations rely heavily on AEM for their digital presence, making its security posture critical for overall enterprise cybersecurity. The platform's architecture includes various components such as form handling mechanisms, content rendering engines, and user interface frameworks that collectively process and display user-generated content.
The stored cross-site scripting vulnerability in Adobe Experience Manager versions 6.5.18 and earlier stems from insufficient input validation and output encoding within the form processing components. This flaw specifically affects how the system handles user-submitted data in form fields, failing to properly sanitize or escape potentially malicious script content before storing and rendering it. The vulnerability manifests when low-privileged users can submit content containing malicious javascript code through form inputs that are subsequently displayed to other users without adequate security filtering. The root cause aligns with CWE-79 which defines improper neutralization of input during web page generation, creating an environment where attacker-controlled data can be executed in the context of a victim's browser session.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple script execution, as it enables attackers to perform various malicious activities through compromised user sessions. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to steal session cookies, redirect users to malicious domains, deface content, or harvest sensitive information from authenticated users. The low privilege requirement means that even users with minimal access rights could potentially compromise the platform's integrity, making this vulnerability particularly dangerous in environments where user access controls are not strictly enforced. The stored nature of the vulnerability means that the malicious payload remains persistent and can affect multiple users over time, unlike reflected XSS attacks that require specific user interaction with crafted URLs.
Security professionals should implement immediate mitigations including input validation at multiple layers, enhanced output encoding for all user-generated content, and comprehensive access control reviews. Organizations must ensure that all form fields undergo strict sanitization before storage and that the platform's content rendering mechanisms properly encode data during display. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of defense-in-depth strategies where multiple security controls work together to prevent exploitation. According to ATT&CK framework, this vulnerability maps to T1059.007 for script execution and T1531 for credential access, highlighting the potential for both code execution and information theft. Regular security assessments and vulnerability scanning should be conducted to identify similar issues in related components, while incident response procedures should be updated to address potential exploitation attempts. The affected versions should be upgraded to patched releases immediately, with thorough testing to ensure compatibility with existing digital experiences and workflows.