Cyber Resilience

CVE-2024-45046

MediumPublic PoC

Published: 28 August 2024

Published
28 August 2024
Modified
04 September 2024
KEV Added
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Patch
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CVSS Score v3.1 5.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0033 56.5th percentile
Risk Priority 11 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2024-45046 is a medium-severity Cross-site Scripting (CWE-79) vulnerability in Phpoffice Phpspreadsheet. Its CVSS base score is 5.4 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique JavaScript (T1059.007); ranked in the top 43.5% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

PHPSpreadsheet is a pure PHP library for reading and writing spreadsheet files. In affected versions `\PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Writer\Html` doesn't sanitize spreadsheet styling information such as font names, allowing an attacker to inject arbitrary JavaScript on the page. As a result an attacker…

more

may used a crafted spreadsheet to fully takeover a session of a user viewing spreadsheet files as HTML. This issue has been addressed in release version 2.1.0. All users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

CWE(s)
CWE-79

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1059.007 JavaScript Execution
Adversaries may abuse various implementations of JavaScript for execution.
attack.mitre.org →
T1539 Steal Web Session Cookie Credential Access
An adversary may steal web application or service session cookies and use them to gain access to web applications or Internet services as an authenticated user without needing credentials.
attack.mitre.org →
T1555.003 Credentials from Web Browsers Credential Access
Adversaries may acquire credentials from web browsers by reading files specific to the target browser.
attack.mitre.org →
T1659 Content Injection Initial Access
Adversaries may gain access and continuously communicate with victims by injecting malicious content into systems through online network traffic.
attack.mitre.org →
Why these techniques?

The XSS vulnerability in PHPSpreadsheet's HTML writer allows arbitrary JavaScript injection via unsanitized styling (e.g., font names) in crafted spreadsheets, enabling JavaScript execution (T1059.007), web session cookie theft for session takeover (T1539), browser credential theft (T1555.003), and content injection into generated web content (T1659).

Affected Assets

phpoffice
phpspreadsheet
≤ 1.29.1 · 2.0.0 — 2.1.0

Mitigating Controls

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

CA-8 Penetration Testing
addresses: CWE-79

Penetration testing submits XSS payloads to web applications, detecting cross-site scripting flaws for subsequent remediation.

SI-10 Information Input Validation
addresses: CWE-79

Validates web inputs to reject script-related content that could produce XSS.

SI-15 Information Output Filtering
addresses: CWE-79

Output validation against expected content can reject or sanitize script content in generated web pages, reducing XSS exploitability.

References