Description


WebSub is a W3C recommendation produced by the Social Web Working Group. In recommendation REC-websub-20180123, the intent-verification protocol requires a subscriber to echo the `hub.challenge` value, also exposed as `hub_challenge` by some frameworks, but does not require safe response media typing or disabled MIME sniffing. An attacker can initiate a subscription to obtain a callback URL and redirect a victim browser to a crafted verification request containing HTML or JavaScript. Subscribers that return the challenge as `text/html` can execute the reflected content in the subscriber origin, using a victim's existing session to read private data or perform actions, exposing `localStorage` or `sessionStorage` and browser permissions granted to that origin. An alternative uses the verification response as an attacker-controlled same-origin script resource to bypass `script-src 'self'`; this can remain possible with `application/octet-stream` when MIME sniffing is allowed. Safe media typing and `X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff` are both needed to address the described scenarios. WebSub Rocks demonstrated reflection, but the advisory does not establish practical impact on that demonstration site.

Related CPE's


Could not find any relations

Weaknesses



CWE-79

CVSS impact metrics


CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

5.7 · Medium

Information


Source identifier

[email protected]

Vulnerability status

Deferred

Published

2026-10-27T23:17:05.687Z

17 hours ago

Last modified

2026-10-28T15:24:56.033Z

53 minutes ago