CVE-2025-23741 in Notifications Center Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 03/03/2025
Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in NotFound Notifications Center allows Reflected XSS. This issue affects Notifications Center: from n/a through 1.5.2.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/03/2025
This vulnerability represents a classic cross-site scripting flaw that exploits improper input sanitization during web page generation within the NotFound Notifications Center application. The reflected XSS vulnerability occurs when user-supplied input is not adequately neutralized before being incorporated into dynamically generated web content, creating an avenue for malicious actors to inject client-side scripts. The vulnerability specifically manifests in the notification handling mechanisms where user-provided data flows directly into the HTML response without proper encoding or validation, making it susceptible to script injection attacks that can execute in the context of other users' browsers.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability follows standard reflected XSS patterns where an attacker crafts malicious input that appears in the application's response, typically through URL parameters or form fields. When a victim visits a specially crafted URL containing malicious script payloads, the notification center renders this input directly into the web page without proper HTML escaping or sanitization. This allows attackers to execute arbitrary JavaScript code in the victim's browser context, potentially enabling session hijacking, credential theft, or redirection to malicious sites. The vulnerability affects all versions up to and including 1.5.2, indicating this flaw has persisted across multiple releases without proper remediation.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple script execution to encompass significant security risks for organizations relying on the notifications center. Attackers could leverage this vulnerability to steal user sessions, modify notification content, or redirect users to phishing sites that appear legitimate. The reflected nature of the vulnerability means that exploitation requires user interaction with a malicious link, but once triggered, the attack can persist across multiple users who encounter the same malicious notification content. This creates a vector for widespread impact within organizations where notification systems are frequently accessed by multiple users. The vulnerability's presence in the notification center component suggests potential compromise of critical alerting mechanisms that organizations depend upon for security monitoring and incident response.
Mitigation strategies should prioritize immediate input validation and output encoding implementations that align with established security best practices. The primary defense involves implementing proper HTML escaping of all user-supplied input before rendering in web pages, ensuring that special characters are encoded to prevent interpretation as HTML or script elements. Organizations should also consider implementing Content Security Policy headers to limit script execution and establish proper input validation routines that reject or sanitize potentially malicious content. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-79 which categorizes cross-site scripting flaws, and maps to ATT&CK technique T1566 related to social engineering through malicious notifications. Regular security testing including dynamic application security testing and manual penetration testing should be implemented to identify similar input validation weaknesses in other components of the system.
The persistence of this vulnerability across multiple versions suggests inadequate security review processes during development and release cycles. Organizations should implement automated security scanning tools that can identify input validation weaknesses and ensure that all user-facing components undergo rigorous security testing before deployment. Additionally, implementing proper security awareness training for development teams can help prevent similar issues in future releases by emphasizing the importance of input sanitization and output encoding in web application security. The vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of maintaining up-to-date security practices and conducting regular vulnerability assessments to identify and remediate potential attack vectors in notification and alerting systems that form integral parts of organizational security infrastructure.