GHSA-wjwr-3jch-479j CVE-2007-3383

Apache Tomcat SendMailServlet XSS

Medium Maven

Severity: Medium; The publisher's own rating, not a CVSS score
Exploit chance (EPSS): 9.48%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 95.44% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-80 Improper Neutralization of Script-Related HTML Tags in a Web Page (Basic XSS)
Fix: None yet; No fixed version published

Description

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in SendMailServlet in the examples web application (examples/jsp/mail/sendmail.jsp) in Apache Tomcat 4.0.0 through 4.0.6 and 4.1.0 through 4.1.36 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the From field and possibly other fields, related to generation of error messages.

Affected versions

Maven

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
org.apache.tomcat:tomcat	`>= 4.0.0, <= 4.0.6`	No fix yet
org.apache.tomcat:tomcat	`>= 4.1.0, <= 4.1.36`	No fix yet

How to fix

No fixed version has been published yet. Until one is, remove or replace the package, or turn off or isolate the affected feature. This page updates when a fix ships.

Weakness

CWE-80: Improper Neutralization of Script-Related HTML Tags in a Web Page (Basic XSS)

The product receives input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special characters such as "<", ">", and "&" that could be interpreted as web-scripting elements when they are sent to a downstream component that processes web pages.

How to prevent it

Implementation: Carefully check each input parameter against a rigorous positive specification (allowlist) defining the specific characters and format allowed. All input should be neutralized, not just parameters that the user is supposed to specify, but all data in the request, including hidden fields, cookies, headers, the URL itself, and so forth. A common mistake that leads to continuing XSS vulnerabilities is to validate only fields that are expected to be redisplayed by the site. We often encounter data from the request that is reflected by the application server or the application that the development team did not anticipate. Also, a field that is not currently reflected may be used by a future developer. Therefore, validating ALL parts of the HTTP request is recommended.
Implementation: Use and specify an output encoding that can be handled by the downstream component that is reading the output. Common encodings include ISO-8859-1, UTF-7, and UTF-8. When an encoding is not specified, a downstream component may choose a different encoding, either by assuming a default encoding or automatically inferring which encoding is being used, which can be erroneous. When the encodings are inconsistent, the downstream component might treat some character or byte sequences as special, even if they are not special in the original encoding. Attackers might then be able to exploit this discrepancy and conduct injection attacks; they even might be able to bypass protection mechanisms that assume the original encoding is also being used by the downstream component. The problem of inconsistent output encodings often arises in web pages. If an encoding is not specified in an HTTP header, web browsers often guess about which encoding is being used. This can open up the browser to subtle XSS attacks.
Implementation: With Struts, write all data from form beans with the bean's filter attribute set to true.
Implementation: To help mitigate XSS attacks against the user's session cookie, set the session cookie to be HttpOnly. In browsers that support the HttpOnly feature (such as more recent versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox), this attribute can prevent the user's session cookie from being accessible to malicious client-side scripts that use document.cookie. This is not a complete solution, since HttpOnly is not supported by all browsers. More importantly, XmlHttpRequest and other powerful browser technologies provide read access to HTTP headers, including the Set-Cookie header in which the HttpOnly flag is set.

References

Advisories

nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2007-3383

Timeline

May 1, 2022 Published
Nov 8, 2023 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-69r9-qgr7-g2wj Apache Tomcat Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data vulnerability	High Known exploited	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
GHSA-h3x4-894j-xpx5 Apache Tomcat's FORM authentication process has an Incorrect Authorization vulnerability	Critical	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
GHSA-9xv2-5v5q-p794 Apache Tomcat's DIGEST authenticator has an Authentication Bypass by Capture-replay vulnerability	Critical	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
GHSA-gcx9-497g-6cp6 Apache Tomcat has an Improper Access Control, Incorrect Authorization vulnerability	Critical	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
GHSA-5m62-pw8w-7w9f Apache Tomcat - Security constraints not correctly applied	Critical	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
GHSA-9m89-8frq-c98c Apache Tomcat - AJP secret compared in non-constant time	Low	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
GHSA-5mp6-jrq3-r938 Apache Tomcat: LockOutRealm treats user names as case-sensitive	High	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
GHSA-h6fc-48rj-7qqh Apache Tomcat - Digest authenticator will authenticate any unknown user	Critical	Also affects org.apache.tomcat:tomcat

Is this in your code?

MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.

Check your repos with MergeHarbor