Description

A vulnerability was determined in maliangnansheng bbs-springboot 3.0.0. This affects the function utils.toToc of the file ArticleController.java. This manipulation causes cross site scripting. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "3.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-13T15:16:28.990Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-13T15:16:28.990Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability exists in the bbs-springboot application (version 3.0.0) developed by maliangnansheng.\nThe vulnerability is localized within the ArticleController.java file, specifically impacting the utils.toToc function.\nThis flaw allows remote attackers to inject malicious JavaScript code into the application, which is then executed within the context of a victim's browser session.\nThe primary impact involves unauthorized execution of arbitrary scripts, potentially leading to session hijacking, credential theft, and unauthorized actions performed on behalf of authenticated users.\nThe attack is remotely exploitable, requiring no prior authentication unless the specific context of the article hosting requires it.\nThe vulnerability arises from improper sanitization or encoding of user-supplied input before it is rendered to the Document Object Model (DOM).",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is an insecure implementation of input processing within the utils.toToc function located in ArticleController.java.\nThe function is designed to process article content—likely for the purpose of generating a table of contents or rendering formatted text—but it fails to adequately neutralize or escape HTML tags and JavaScript event handlers embedded within the input data.\nBecause the application does not implement robust output encoding or context-aware sanitization, a malicious actor can supply a crafted payload containing HTML or script elements (e.g., <script>alert(1)</script> or event-driven attributes like 'onerror') into fields processed by utils.toToc.\nWhen a user navigates to the article containing the malicious payload, the bbs-springboot server serves the unescaped, malicious input to the browser.\nThe victim's browser parses the injected script as legitimate code associated with the site's origin, thereby bypassing the Same-Origin Policy (SOP).\nThis execution allows the attacker to access cookies (if not protected by HttpOnly flags), capture session tokens, manipulate the page structure (DOM-based defacement), or redirect the victim to an attacker-controlled endpoint.\nThe vulnerability is accessible remotely via the HTTP(S) interface. As it resides in the article handling logic, the attack flow involves: (1) An attacker submits a crafted payload into an article body or title field; (2) The application saves this payload into the backend database; (3) The ArticleController retrieves this data; (4) The utils.toToc function processes the data without sanitization; (5) The application renders the malicious payload to other users viewing the article.\nPost-exploitation impact includes the total compromise of a user's session. In scenarios where the victim holds administrative privileges, the attacker may leverage the XSS to escalate privileges by performing actions via the victim's session, such as creating new admin accounts or modifying system configurations."
}