Until Wednesday, a single text message sent through Cisco’s Jabber collaboration application was all it took to touch off a self-replicating attack that would spread malware from one Windows user to another, researchers who developed the exploit said.
The wormable attack was the result of several flaws, which Cisco patched on Wednesday, in the Chromium Embedded Framework that forms the foundation of the Jabber client. A filter that’s designed to block potentially malicious content in incoming messages failed to scrutinize code that invoked a programming interface known as “onanimationstart.”
Jumping through hoops
But even then, the filter still blocked content that contained <style>, an HTML tag that had to be included in a malicious payload. To bypass that protection, the researchers used code that was tailored to a built-in animation component called spinner-grow. With that, the researchers were able to achieve a cross-site scripting exploit that injected a malicious payload directly into the internals of the browser built into Jabber.
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