A significant vulnerability, CVE-2024-37629, has been discovered in SummerNote 0.8.18, allowing Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via the Code View function.
Summernote is a JavaScript library for creating WYSIWYG editors online.
An attacker can use XSS to insert harmful scripts into a trusted application or website.
An XSS attack often starts with an attacker luring a user to click on a malicious link.
According to security researcher Sergio Medeiros, 10,000 web apps have a 0-day vulnerability that can be exploited with a simple XSS payload.
Detecting XSS Vulnerability in the Editor
Given similar XSS concerns in editors like CKEditor and TinyMCE, the security researcher decided to investigate the WYSIWYG Editor.
This led to the SummerNote website, where users can see the WYSIWYG editor’s features on the homepage, along with a GitHub repository URL to examine the codebase.
Users can style their input with HTML components while testing the editor’s Code View function.
The researcher provided the following XSS payload to test how the editor handled malicious input:
“After setting my payload, I clicked the </> button to disable Code View and see if the editor executed it. To my surprise, an alert box confirmed that the XSS payload was valid!” the researcher said.
Because the Code View function isn’t sanitized, it allows injecting malicious XSS payloads that execute JavaScript code once they reach the DOM.
Over 10,000 web applications use this WYSIWYG editor. Since Summernote manages user input formatting, users are vulnerable to persistent XSS issues.
This highlights to hackers that simplicity in “payload creation and exploitation” can sometimes be more effective.
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