CVE-2025-43800
📋 TL;DR
This cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Liferay Portal and DXP allows remote attackers to inject malicious scripts or HTML into rich text fields. When exploited, it can enable session hijacking, credential theft, or content manipulation. Affected users include anyone using vulnerable versions of Liferay Portal 7.4.3.20-7.4.3.111 or Liferay DXP 2023.Q4.0, 2023.Q3.1-2023.Q3.4, and 7.4 GA through update 92.
💻 Affected Systems
- Liferay Portal
- Liferay DXP
📦 What is this software?
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete account takeover, administrative privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and persistent malware deployment across user sessions.
Likely Case
Session hijacking, credential theft, defacement of content, and limited data manipulation by authenticated users.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact with proper input validation, output encoding, and Content Security Policy (CSP) headers in place.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires crafting specific payloads for rich text fields. Attackers need some level of access to input fields.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Liferay Portal 7.4.3.112+; Liferay DXP 2023.Q4.1+, 2023.Q3.5+, update 93+
Vendor Advisory: https://liferay.dev/portal/security/known-vulnerabilities/-/asset_publisher/jekt/content/CVE-2025-43800
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Backup your Liferay instance. 2. Download the appropriate patch from Liferay's customer portal. 3. Apply the patch following Liferay's patch installation guide. 4. Verify the patch was applied successfully.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Input Validation and Output Encoding
allImplement strict input validation and output encoding for all rich text fields to prevent script injection.
Content Security Policy (CSP)
allDeploy a strict Content Security Policy header to mitigate XSS impact by restricting script execution sources.
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Disable or restrict access to rich text fields in objects for untrusted users
- Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to block XSS payload patterns
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check your Liferay version against affected versions. Test rich text fields for XSS by attempting to inject basic script payloads.Check Version:
Check Liferay Control Panel → Configuration → Server Administration → System Information for version detailsVerify Fix Applied:
After patching, verify the version is updated and test that script injection attempts in rich text fields are properly sanitized.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unusual POST requests to object endpoints with script-like content
- Multiple failed rich text field submissions with special characters
Network Indicators:
- HTTP requests containing script tags or JavaScript in rich text field parameters
SIEM Query:
source="liferay.log" AND ("script" OR "javascript" OR "onerror" OR "onload") AND uri_path="/api/jsonws/object*"/