Is This vulnerability exploited in the wild?

No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of This vulnerability being exploited in the wild.

How severe is This vulnerability?

Informational severity, published 2 September 2020.

Which products and versions are affected?

jQuery Mobile all versions; jquery-mobile (npm) SEMVER:introduced=0.

Is there a fix for This vulnerability?

A patch was published on 2019-06-13: Patches merged in PR #8649 and #8650, but no official release with fix was available at advisory publication Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.

How is This vulnerability attacked?

It is attacked over the network, in a software library.

Check whether you run jQuery Mobile or jquery-mobile (npm) at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

jQuery Mobile cross-site scripting in AJAX response handling

Severity: info · Published 2020-09-02

jQuery Mobile is a JavaScript framework used to build mobile-optimized web applications. The framework fetches external content via AJAX and renders it into pages without validating the response type, allowing attackers to inject malicious scripts through crafted URLs. An attacker can trick users into clicking a link that causes arbitrary JavaScript code to execute in their browser, potentially stealing session data or performing actions on the user's behalf.

Vendors: jQuery, npm.

Quick answers

Is This vulnerability exploited in the wild?: No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of This vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
How severe is This vulnerability?: Informational severity, published 2 September 2020.
Which products and versions are affected?: jQuery Mobile all versions; jquery-mobile (npm) SEMVER:introduced=0.
Is there a fix for This vulnerability?: A patch was published on 2019-06-13: Patches merged in PR #8649 and #8650, but no official release with fix was available at advisory publication Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
How is This vulnerability attacked?: It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
Am I affected?: Check whether you run jQuery Mobile or jquery-mobile (npm) at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

Technical details

This is a reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability (CWE-79) in jQuery Mobile's AJAX handling code. The vulnerability exists because the framework processes location.hash parameters to fetch remote content via XMLHttpRequest, then renders the response as HTML using innerHTML without validating the Content-Type header. An attacker can craft a malicious URL with query parameters containing HTML/JavaScript payloads that will be executed in the context of the page. The attack requires user interaction (clicking a malicious link), but no authentication or special network position is needed. Patches were merged into the repository (PR #8649 and #8650) in 2019, but the advisory notes no official release with the fix was made available at publication time.

Affected products

jQuery Mobile all versions

Timeline

2020-09-02: disclosed
2019-06-13: patched: Patches merged in PR #8649 and #8650, but no official release with fix was available at advisory publication

References

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