CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2021-43776 — Backstage is an open platform for building developer portals
Backstage is an open platform for building developer portals. In affected versions the auth-backend plugin allows a malicious actor to trick another user into visiting a vulnerable URL that executes an XSS attack. This attack can potentially allow the attacker to exfiltrate access tokens or other secrets from the user's browser. The default CSP does prevent this attack, but it is expected that some deployments have these policies disabled due to incompatibilities. This is vulnerability is patched in version `0.4.9` of `@backstage/plugin-auth-backend`.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.4 (3.1)
- Published
- 2021-11-26
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-79
Affected products
- linuxfoundation / auth_backend
Matched remediation archetype
Cross-site scripting and unsafe browser output
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Trace reflected, stored, and DOM-derived untrusted values into HTML, attributes, URLs, styles, scripts, and client-side template sinks.
- Identify affected origins, authenticated user roles, sensitive browser capabilities, and where content is shared across tenants.
- Review framework escaping, rich-text sanitization, legacy templates, and client-side rendering paths.
Remediate safely
- Use context-aware framework output encoding and safe DOM APIs; keep untrusted data out of executable contexts.
- Sanitize intentionally supported markup with a maintained allowlist policy and validate URLs and attributes separately.
- Update affected rendering components and add tests for every output context using inert sentinel markup.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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