CVE-2023-36470 Code injection in icon themes of XWiki Platform

What is CVE-2023-36470?

CVE-2023-36470 is a critical code injection vulnerability in Xwiki Xwiki, published on 29 Jun 2023. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

XWiki Platform is a generic wiki platform offering runtime services for applications built on top of it. By either creating a new or editing an existing document with an icon set, an attacker can inject XWiki syntax and Velocity code that is executed with programming rights and thus allows remote code execution. There are different attack vectors, the simplest is the Velocity code in the icon set's HTML or XWiki syntax definition. The [icon picker](https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Icon%20Theme%20Application#HIconPicker) can be used to trigger the rendering of any icon set. The XWiki syntax variant of the icon set is also used without any escaping in some documents, allowing to inject XWiki syntax including script macros into a document that might have programming right, for this the currently used icon theme needs to be edited. Further, the HTML output of the icon set is output as JSON in the icon picker and this JSON is interpreted as XWiki syntax, allowing again the injection of script macros into a document with programming right and thus allowing remote code execution. This impacts the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the whole XWiki instance. This issue has been patched in XWiki 14.10.6 and 15.1. Icon themes now require script right and the code in the icon theme is executed within the context of the icon theme, preventing any rights escalation. A macro for displaying icons has been introduced to avoid injecting the raw wiki syntax of an icon set into another document. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Weakness: CWE-74

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-36470?

12 open source packages ship an affected version, including org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-icon-default, org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-icon-script and org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-icon-ui. It affects 1 product.

Products include Xwiki Xwiki.

How do I fix CVE-2023-36470?

Upgrade org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-icon-default to a fixed version for your release line: 15.2-rc-1 or 14.10.6.

Upgrade, and never evaluate templates, expressions or code built from user input. More about Code injection.

Is CVE-2023-36470 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2023-36470 exists.

Other vulnerabilities in Xwiki Xwiki

• CVE-2025-24893 XWiki Platform Eval Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-53836 XWiki Rendering is vulnerable to RCE attacks when processing nested macros Critical 10.0
• CVE-2024-55662 XWiki allows remote code execution through the extension sheet Critical 10.0
• CVE-2024-55877 XWiki allows remote code execution from account through macro descriptions and XWiki.XWikiSyntaxMacrosList Critical 10.0
• CVE-2024-37901 XWiki Platform vulnerable to remote code execution from account via SearchSuggestConfigSheet Critical 10.0

All Xwiki Xwiki vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-fm68-j7ww-h9xf.