starcitizentools/mediawiki-extensions-shortdescription · Security
Citizen Short Description stored XSS vulnerability through wikitext
- GHSA ID
- GHSA-p85q-mww9-gwqf
- CVE ID
- CVE-2025-53369
- Severity
- high
- Published
- Updated
- CVSS
- 8.6 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L
- CVSS v3
- 8.6 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L
Description
Summary
Short descriptions are not properly sanitized by the ShortDescription before being inserted as HTML using mw.util.addSubtitle, allowing any user to insert arbitrary HTML into the DOM by editing a page.
Details
The description provided by the user via the {{SHORTDESC:}} parser function is insufficiently sanitized by the sanitize() function, as html entities are decoded:
https://github.com/StarCitizenTools/mediawiki-extensions-ShortDescription/blob/7244b1e8b5cb6dbd7e546c5be7fed8a56e33d065/includes/Hooks/ParserHooks.php#L147-L159
Via JS, the short description is then passed to mw.util.addSubtitle, which inserts it as raw HTML:
https://github.com/StarCitizenTools/mediawiki-extensions-ShortDescription/blob/7244b1e8b5cb6dbd7e546c5be7fed8a56e33d065/modules/ext.shortDescription.js#L8
https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/96372101b3c579d9992e8a31a3ccd90a937cac47/resources/src/mediawiki.util/util.js#L552-L563
PoC
- Enable ShortDescription
- Make sure
$wgShortDescriptionEnableTaglineis set totrue(this is the default) - Create a page and insert the following wikitext:
{{SHORTDESC:<img src="" onerror="alert('shortdescription xss')">}} - Visit the page
Impact
Arbitrary HTML can be inserted into the DOM by any user, allowing for JavaScript to be executed.
CWEs
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
References
- https://github.com/StarCitizenTools/mediawiki-extensions-ShortDescription/security/advisories/GHSA-p85q-mww9-gwqf ↗
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-53369 ↗
- https://github.com/StarCitizenTools/mediawiki-extensions-ShortDescription/commit/bc4fdbaeb1dff127fb6d08c0d385b64aa128c8f8 ↗
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-p85q-mww9-gwqf ↗