title: Whoogle Search Cross-site Scripting vulnerability
description: Whoogle Search is a self-hosted metasearch engine. In versions 0.8.3 and prior, the `element` method in `app/routes.py` does not validate the user-controlled `src_type` and `element_url` variables and passes them to the `send` method which sends a `GET` request on lines 339-343 in `requests.py`. The returned contents of the URL are then passed to and reflected back to the user in the `send_file` function on line 484, together with the user-controlled `src_type`, which allows the attacker to control the HTTP response content type leading to a cross-site scripting vulnerability. An attacker could craft a special URL to point to a malicious website and send the link to a victim. The fact that the link would contain a trusted domain (e.g. from one of public Whoogle instances) could be used to trick the user into clicking the link. The malicious website could, for example, be a copy of a real website, meant to steal a person’s credentials to the website, or trick that person in another way. Version 0.8.4 contains a patch for this issue.
problem types: CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
affected:
{
vendor: benbusby
product: whoogle-search
versions:
version: < 0.8.4, status: affected
}
metrics:
cvssV3_1: [
attackComplexity: LOW
attackVector: NETWORK
availabilityImpact: NONE
baseScore: 6.1
baseSeverity: MEDIUM
confidentialityImpact: LOW
integrityImpact: LOW
privilegesRequired: NONE
scope: CHANGED
userInteraction: REQUIRED
vectorString: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
version: 3.1
]