(Snyk) Fixed finding: "XSS"

[pixee-latio]

Remediation

This change fixes "XSS" (id = java/XSS) identified by Snyk.

Details

This change fixes introduces HTML encoding to fix Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. XSS is a vulnerability that is tricky to understand initially, but really easy to exploit.

Consider the following example code:

Welcome to our site <%= request.getParameter("name") %>

An attacker could construct a link with an HTTP parameter name containing malicious JavaScript and send it to the victims, and if they click it, cause it to execute in the victims' browsers in the domain context. This could allow attackers to exfiltrate session cookies and spoof their identity, perform actions on victim's behalf, and more generally "do anything" as that user.

Our changes introduce an HTML-encoding mechanism that look something like this:

- Welcome to our site <%= request.getParameter("name") %>
+ Welcome to our site <%= org.owasp.encoder.Encode.forHtml(request.getParameter("name")) %>

This change neutralizes the control characters that attackers would use to execute code. Depending on the context in which the output is rendered (e.g., inside HTML tags, HTML attributes, in JavaScript, quoted contexts, etc.), you may need to use another encoder. Check out the OWASP XSS Prevention CheatSheet to learn more about these cases and other controls you may need.

❌ The following packages couldn't be installed automatically, probably because the dependency manager is unsupported. Please install them manually:

Gradle

dependencies {
  implementation("org.owasp.encoder:encoder:1.2.3")
}

Maven

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.owasp.encoder</groupId>
    <artifactId>encoder</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.3</version>
  </dependency>
<dependencies>

More reading

• https://portswigger.net/web-security/cross-site-scripting
• https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Cross_Site_Scripting_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.html
• https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/XSS_Filter_Evasion_Cheat_Sheet.html

I have additional improvements ready for this repo! If you want to see them, leave the comment:

@pixeebot next

... and I will open a new PR right away!

🧚🤖 Powered by Pixeebot

Feedback | Community | Docs | Codemod ID: snyk:java/xss

[dryrunsecurity]

DryRun Security Summary

The code change addresses an Unsafe Deserialization vulnerability by encoding the deserialized object's string representation to prevent potential injection of malicious HTML or JavaScript, though additional security measures are recommended to fully mitigate the risk.

Expand for full summary

Summary:

The code change you provided is related to an application security issue known as Unsafe Deserialization. The changes aim to address this vulnerability by encoding the deserialized object's string representation before returning it in the response. This helps mitigate the risk of Unsafe Deserialization by preventing the injection of malicious HTML or JavaScript into the response.

While this change improves the security of the application, it does not completely eliminate the Unsafe Deserialization vulnerability. The underlying issue is that the application is still deserializing untrusted data, which could potentially lead to other types of attacks, such as denial of service or information disclosure. To further improve the security of the application, it's recommended to consider avoiding deserialization of untrusted data, implementing input validation and sanitization, using a secure serialization/deserialization library, and implementing proper exception handling and logging.

Files Changed:

• insecure-java/src/main/java/com/example/insecurejava/UnsafeDeserializationController.java: This file is being modified to address the Unsafe Deserialization vulnerability. The changes include adding an import statement for the Encode class from the org.owasp.encoder library and calling the Encode.forHtml() method to encode the deserialized object's string representation before returning it in the response.

Code Analysis

We ran 9 analyzers against 1 file and 0 analyzers had findings. 9 analyzers had no findings.

View PR in the DryRun Dashboard.

[pixee-latio]

I'm confident in this change, but I'm not a maintainer of this project. Do you see any reason not to merge it?

If this change was not helpful, or you have suggestions for improvements, please let me know!

[pixee-latio]

Just a friendly ping to remind you about this change. If there are concerns about it, we'd love to hear about them!

[pixee-latio]

This change may not be a priority right now, so I'll close it. If there was something I could have done better, please let me know!

You can also customize me to make sure I'm working with you in the way you want.