CVE-2023-40177: XWiki Platform privilege escalation (PR) from account through AWM content fields

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-08-23 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-95

Description

XWiki Platform is a generic wiki platform offering runtime services for applications built on top of it. Any registered user can use the content field of their user profile page to execute arbitrary scripts with programming rights, thus effectively performing rights escalation. This issue is present since version 4.3M2 when AppWithinMinutes Application added support for the Content field, allowing any wiki page (including the user profile page) to use its content as an AWM Content field, which has a custom displayer that executes the content with the rights of the ``AppWithinMinutes.Content`` author, rather than the rights of the content author. The vulnerability has been fixed in XWiki 14.10.5 and 15.1RC1. The fix is in the content of the AppWithinMinutes.Content page that defines the custom displayer. By using the ``display`` script service to render the content we make sure that the proper author is used for access rights checks.

Affected products

xwiki-platform: from 4.3.1 before 14.10.5; 4.3-milestone2, 15.0, 15.0-rc1 — fixed in 14.10.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: xwiki-platform 14.10.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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