GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH

plone.restapi vulnerable to Stored Cross Site Scripting with SVG image in user portrait

Workarounds

You could remove the portrait field from the member data schema, and possibly remove all portraits that are already in the database, but this seems a bit drastic.

There is a stored cross site scripting vulnerability for SVG images uploaded in user portraits.

Note that a page that uses an image tag with an SVG image as source is never vulnerable, even when the SVG image contains malicious code. To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker would first need to upload an SVG image as user portrait, and then trick a user into following a link to this portrait.

Untrusted input is rendered as active markup in a victim's browser, which can run script in their session. Typical impact: session or credential theft, and actions taken as the user.

GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH has a CVSS score of 3.7 (Low). The vector is network-reachable, low privileges required, and user interaction required. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (8.43.3); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.

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A patch will be released in plone.restapi 8.43.3. This version is good for Plone 6.0, and for Plone 5.2 on Python 3.

In plone.restapi 7 or earlier there was no @portrait endpoint yet, so there is nothing to fix in that version. It is still vulnerable to this attack, and needs a fix in Zope 4. These two vulnerabilities share the same CVE: CVE-2023-42458.

1. What is GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH? GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH is a low-severity cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in plone.restapi (pip), affecting versions >= 8.0.0, < 8.43.3. It is fixed in 8.43.3. Untrusted input is rendered as active markup in a victim's browser, which can run script in their session.
2. How severe is GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH? GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH has a CVSS score of 3.7 (Low). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
3. Which versions of plone.restapi are affected by GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH? plone.restapi (pip) versions >= 8.0.0, < 8.43.3 is affected.
4. Is there a fix for GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH? Yes. GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH is fixed in 8.43.3. Upgrade to this version or later.
5. Is GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
6. What actually determines whether GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
7. How do I fix GHSA-HC5C-R8M5-2GFH? Upgrade plone.restapi to 8.43.3 or later.

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