CRLF/HTML entity injection with most recent version of PHPMyAdmin #16056

Overview :

** DISPUTED ** phpMyAdmin 5.0.2 allows CRLF injection, as demonstrated by %0D%0Astring%0D%0A inputs to login form fields causing CRLF sequences to be reflected on an error page. NOTE: the vendor states “I don’t see anything specifically exploitable.”

CVE-2020-11441

CRLF/HTML entity injection with most recent version of PHPMyAdmin #16056

Describe the bug

The login form does not properly escape CRLF sequences, this can lead to HTML entity injection at the very least, or reflected XSS at the very worst.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Go to ‘index.php’
Insert into the login fields, username, password, and the hidden field of target, and insert this value into those fields: %0D%0Astring%0D%0A and the login error will display the injected CRLF sequences, and injected url encoded entities, such as single or double quotes(double quotes are not as effective as single quotes).

Expected behavior

I expected the application to drop/filter out the CRLF sequences seeing as an issue similar was detected back in 2005.

Server configuration

Operating system: Ubuntu
Web server: Apache
Database version: MySQL
PHP version: most recent.
phpMyAdmin version: most recent.

Client configuration

Browser: Firefox
Operating system: Windows 10