Description: An attacker can inject malicious JavaScript code into the title attribute of a Bootstrap tooltip or popover. When a user hovers over or interacts with the element, the JavaScript code executes in their browser. This is achieved by exploiting improper sanitization of user-supplied data used to populate the title attribute.
Impact: Account compromise, data theft, website defacement, malware distribution, phishing attacks.
Affected Bootstrap Component: Tooltip, Popover (JavaScript initialization and data attribute handling)
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Always sanitize and encode user-provided data before setting it as the
titleattribute for tooltips and popovers. - Use secure templating engines that automatically escape HTML entities.
- Avoid directly injecting raw HTML into data attributes or JavaScript configurations.
- Implement Content Security Policy (CSP) to restrict the execution of inline JavaScript and external scripts.
Description: Developers extending Bootstrap's functionality with custom JavaScript might introduce DOM-based XSS vulnerabilities. If custom scripts process URL parameters, location.hash, or other client-side data without proper sanitization and use it to manipulate the DOM, attackers can craft malicious URLs to execute arbitrary JavaScript in the user's browser.
Impact: Account compromise, data theft, website defacement, malware distribution, phishing attacks.
Affected Bootstrap Component: Custom JavaScript extensions, potentially interacting with any Bootstrap component.
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Thoroughly review and security test all custom JavaScript code interacting with Bootstrap components.
- Avoid using
eval()or similar unsafe JavaScript functions. - Sanitize and validate all client-side data sources (URL parameters,
location.hash, etc.) before using them to manipulate the DOM. - Follow secure coding practices for JavaScript development.
Description: Attackers can target applications using outdated versions of Bootstrap that contain publicly known security vulnerabilities. They can leverage exploit code or techniques specific to those vulnerabilities to compromise the application or its users.
Impact: Varies depending on the specific vulnerability, but can include account compromise, data theft, website defacement, denial of service.
Affected Bootstrap Component: Varies depending on the specific vulnerability, could affect any module (CSS, JavaScript).
Risk Severity: High to Critical (depending on the vulnerability)
Mitigation Strategies:
- Regularly update Bootstrap to the latest stable version.
- Monitor Bootstrap's security advisories and release notes for vulnerability announcements.
- Implement a robust dependency management process to track and update dependencies.
- Use vulnerability scanning tools to identify outdated Bootstrap versions and other vulnerable dependencies.
Description: If an attacker compromises a Content Delivery Network (CDN) hosting Bootstrap files, they could inject malicious code into the Bootstrap JavaScript or CSS files served by the CDN. Applications loading Bootstrap from the compromised CDN would then unknowingly execute the malicious code in users' browsers.
Impact: Widespread compromise of applications using the affected CDN, leading to account compromise, data theft, website defacement, malware distribution, and potentially large-scale attacks.
Affected Bootstrap Component: All Bootstrap components loaded from the compromised CDN (CSS, JavaScript, fonts, etc.).
Risk Severity: Critical
Mitigation Strategies:
- Use reputable and trusted CDNs with strong security practices.
- Implement Subresource Integrity (SRI) hashes for all Bootstrap files loaded from CDNs. This ensures that the browser verifies the integrity of the files before execution, preventing execution of tampered files.
- Consider hosting Bootstrap files locally instead of relying on external CDNs, if feasible and security policies allow.