The Exploit

Notes from the Front Lines of Penetration Testing

ManageEngine Key Manager Plus Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability (CVE-2021-28382)

ManageEngine Key Manager Plus Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability (CVE-2021-28382)

I’m Matt Dunn, lead penetration tester here at Raxis. This is a summary of the second stored cross-site scripting vulnerability I discovered while testing several Zoho-owned ManageEngine products. This vulnerability exists in the Key Manager Plus Version 6000.

Summary

Recently I discovered a stored Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability in the Zoho-owned ManageEngine Key Manager Plus for Version 6000 (CVE-2021-28382). The vulnerability exists in any of a user’s details fields when they are imported from Active Directory. This can be performed in one of the name fields or the email field, and is executed when visiting the /apiclient/index.jsp#/Settings/UserManagement page. After this page loads, the user’s details are loaded with unescaped content, allowing for malicious JavaScript to be reflected back to users.

Proof of Concept

The vulnerability can be triggered by inserting html content, specifically script tags, into the first name, last name, or email field of an Active Directory user. The following was inserted as a proof of concept to reflect the user’s cookie in an alert box:

<script>alert(document.cookie)</script>

An example of this in the Last Name field of one such user can be seen here:

Stored XSS Payload

After that user’s details load on the UserManagement page, the HTML is then presented unescaped on the web page, which allows the script tags to be loaded as valid JavaScript. The unescaped HTML, as loaded, can be seen here:

Unescaped JavaScript Tags

After loading the UserManagement page, the malicious content is executed, as shown below:

XSS Execution Displaying the User's Cookie

Affected Versions

Raxis discovered this vulnerability on Manage Engine Key Manager Plus 6000 (6.0.0), but any version below 6001 could be vulnerable when importing users from Active Directory.

Remediation

Upgrade ManageEngine Key Manager Plus to version 6001 or later immediately. Version 6001 can be found here: https://www.manageengine.com/key-manager/release-notes.html#6001

Disclosure Timeline

  • March 5, 2021 – Vulnerability reported to Zoho
  • March 8, 2021 – Zoho begins investigation into report
  • March 13, 2021 – Zoho releases version 6001 to mitigate vulnerability
  • March 15, 2021 CVE-2021-28382 assigned to this vulnerability

CVE Links


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