Re: CuteNews 1.4.1 <= Cross Site Scripting

["Steven M. Christey" <coley@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Exploit:
>http://www.example.com/index.php?mod=editnews&action=editnews&id=1145397112&source=[XSS]


This XSS is likely resultant from a more serious issue in which the
$source variable is not being validated, so it is subject to attacks
such as directory traversal.  Given the program's assumption of the
file format, it is possible that only portions of certain files could
be read.  The "doeditnews" action does overwrite this same file, so it
could also be used at least for file corruption.  However, this is all
based on source analysis; I did not test this.


from inc/editnews.mdu in CuteNews 1.4.1:

  elseif($action == "editnews")
  {
  // Show The Article for Editing
      if($source == ""){ $all_db = file("./data/news.txt"); }
      elseif($source == "postponed"){ $all_db = 
file("./data/postponed_news.txt"); }
      elseif($source == "unapproved"){ $all_db = 
file("./data/unapproved_news.txt"); }
      else{ $all_db = file("./data/archives/$source.news.arch"); }
          $found = FALSE;
          foreach ($all_db as $line)
      {
                $item_db=explode("|",$line);
                if ($id == $item_db[0]){ $found = TRUE; break;}
        }//foreach news line

and later:

  elseif($action == "doeditnews")
  {
  [SNIP]
    else{ $news_file = "./data/archives/$source.news.arch"; $com_file = 
"./data/archives/$source.comments.arch";}

        $old_db = file("$news_file");
        $new_db = fopen("$news_file", w);


- Steve