CVE-2023-48240 XWiki Platform sends cookies to external images in rendered diff and is vulnerable to server side request forgery

What is CVE-2023-48240?

CVE-2023-48240 is a critical server-side request forgery vulnerability in Xwiki Xwiki, published on 20 Nov 2023. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

XWiki Platform is a generic wiki platform. The rendered diff in XWiki embeds images to be able to compare the contents and not display a difference for an actually unchanged image. For this, XWiki requests all embedded images on the server side. These requests are also sent for images from other domains and include all cookies that were sent in the original request to ensure that images with restricted view right can be compared. Starting in version 11.10.1 and prior to versions 14.10.15, 15.5.1, and 15.6, this allows an attacker to steal login and session cookies that allow impersonating the current user who views the diff. The attack can be triggered with an image that references the rendered diff, thus making it easy to trigger. Apart from stealing login cookies, this also allows server-side request forgery (the result of any successful request is returned in the image's source) and viewing protected content as once a resource is cached, it is returned for all users. As only successful requests are cached, the cache will be filled by the first user who is allowed to access the resource. This has been patched in XWiki 14.10.15, 15.5.1 and 15.6. The rendered diff now only downloads images from trusted domains. Further, cookies are only sent when the image's domain is the same the requested domain. The cache has been changed to be specific for each user. As a workaround, the image embedding feature can be disabled by deleting `xwiki-platform-diff-xml-<version>.jar` in `WEB-INF/lib/`.

Weakness: CWE-918, CWE-281, CWE-201

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-48240?

6 open source packages ship an affected version, including org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-diff-xml. It affects 1 product.

Products include Xwiki Xwiki.

How do I fix CVE-2023-48240?

Upgrade org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-diff-xml to a fixed version for your release line: 14.10.15, 15.5.1 or 15.6.

Upgrade, and send outbound requests through an allow-list that blocks internal addresses. More about Server-side request forgery.

Is CVE-2023-48240 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-48240 in the wild and no public exploit code.

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-7rfg-6273-f5wp.