HighGHSA-r4f8-f93x-5qh3BIT-typo3-2023-24814CVE-2023-24814

TYPO3 is vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting via frontend rendering

Published 8 Feb 2023 · Updated 10 Sept 2026

Affected packages

Affected
>=12.0.0 <12.2.0
Fixed in
12.2.0
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms-core:^12.2.0
Affected
>=11.0.0 <11.5.23
Fixed in
11.5.23
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms-core:^11.5.23
Affected
>=10.0.0 <10.4.36
Fixed in
10.4.36
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms-core:^10.4.36
Affected
>=9.0.0 <9.5.40
Fixed in
9.5.40
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms-core:^9.5.40
Affected
>=8.7.0 <8.7.51
Fixed in
8.7.51
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms-core:^8.7.51
typo3/cmsComposer
Affected
>=10.0.0 <10.4.35
Fixed in
10.4.35
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms:^10.4.35
typo3/cmsComposer
Affected
>=11.0.0 <11.5.23
Fixed in
11.5.23
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms:^11.5.23
typo3/cmsComposer
Affected
>=12.0.0 <12.2.0
Fixed in
12.2.0
Update to the fixed version for your release line, for example:composer require typo3/cms:^12.2.0

Details

> ### CVSS: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:H/A:L/E:F/RL:O/RC:C (8.2)

Problem

TYPO3 core component GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv() uses the unfiltered server environment variable PATH_INFO, which allows attackers to inject malicious content.

In combination with the TypoScript setting `config.absRefPrefix=auto`, attackers can inject malicious HTML code into pages that have not yet been rendered and cached. As a result, injected values would be cached and delivered to other website visitors (persisted cross-site scripting).

Individual code which relies on the resolved value of `GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('SCRIPT_NAME')` and corresponding usages (as shown below) are vulnerable as well.

  • GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('PATH_INFO')
  • GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('SCRIPT_NAME')
  • GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('TYPO3_REQUEST_DIR')
  • GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('TYPO3_REQUEST_SCRIPT')
  • GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('TYPO3_SITE_PATH')
  • GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('TYPO3_SITE_SCRIPT')
  • GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv('TYPO3_SITE_URL')

Installations of TYPO3 versions 8.7 and 9.x are probably only affected when server environment variable `TYPO3_PATH_ROOT` is defined - which is the case if they were installed via Composer.

Additional investigations confirmed that Apache and Microsoft IIS web servers using PHP-CGI (FPM, FCGI/FastCGI, or similar) are affected. There might be the risk that nginx is vulnerable as well. It was not possible to exploit Apache/mod_php scenarios.

Solution

The usage of server environment variable PATH_INFO has been removed from corresponding processings in GeneralUtility::getIndpEnv(). Besides that, the public property TypoScriptFrontendController::$absRefPrefix is encoded for both being used as a URI component and for being used as a prefix in an HTML context. This mitigates the cross-site scripting vulnerability.

Update to TYPO3 versions 8.7.51 ELTS, 9.5.40 ELTS, 10.4.36 LTS, 11.5.23 LTS and 12.2.0 that fix the problem described above.

> ℹ️ Strong security defaults - Manual actions required > Any web server using PHP-CGI (FPM, FCGI/FastCGI, or similar) needs to ensure that the PHP setting **`cgi.fix_pathinfo=1`** is used, which is the default PHP setting. In case this setting is not enabled, an exception is thrown to avoid continuing with invalid path information.

For websites that cannot be patched timely the TypoScript setting `config.absRefPrefix` at least should be set to a static path value, instead of using auto - e.g. config.absRefPrefix=/ - this does not fix all aspects of the vulnerability, and is just considered to be an intermediate mitigation to the most prominent manifestation.

References

Is GHSA-r4f8-f93x-5qh3 in any of your client repos?

Checking one package by hand is fine. Checking it across forty client projects is not. NPMscan reads the lockfiles in every GitHub repo you pick, finds each project with an affected typo3/cms-core, and gives you the command that fixes it.

References

Advisory data from OSV.dev (opens OSV.dev in a new tab), refreshed daily.