Executive brief
XWiki is a collaborative platform used for knowledge management and documentation. A vulnerability in how the platform handles page renaming and moving allows users with basic editing permissions to escalate their privileges. This could allow an attacker to execute unauthorized scripts, potentially leading to full system compromise, data theft, or service disruption.
Technical details
A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in XWiki's refactoring module (xwiki-platform-refactoring-default). When a page containing a link is renamed or moved, the system incorrectly updates metadata in a way that can grant the page script or programming rights it should not possess. An attacker with 'edit' rights can exploit this by creating a page with malicious scripts in xobjects and then inducing a user with higher privileges (such as an administrator) to perform a move or rename operation on a linked target. This results in the execution of the attacker's scripts under the context of the higher-privileged user. The issue is resolved by ensuring that refactoring operations only update display metadata (originalMetadataAuthor) without affecting the security context used for rights evaluation.
Affected products
- XWiki XWiki Platform >= 7.4.5, < 8.0-milestone-1; >= 8.2, < 16.4.7; >= 16.5.0-rc-1, < 16.10.4; >= 17.0.0-rc-1, < 17.1.0-rc-1
Timeline
- 2025-06-13: disclosed
- 2025-06-13: advisory
- 2025-06-13: patched