CVE-2023-45815
MEDIUMCVE-2023-45815 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.4) Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in archivebox. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2023-45815 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
ArchiveBox: Viewing wget extractor output while logged in as an admin allows archived JS to execute in the admins context
Blast Radius
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Description
ArchiveBox is an open source self-hosted web archiving system. Any users who are using the wget extractor and view the content it outputs. The impact is potentially severe if you are logged in to the ArchiveBox admin site in the same browser session and view an archived malicious page designed to target your ArchiveBox instance. Malicious Javascript could potentially act using your logged-in admin credentials and add/remove/modify snapshots, add/remove/modify ArchiveBox users, and generally do anything an admin user could do. The impact is less severe for non-logged-in users, as malicious Javascript cannot modify any archives, but it can still read all the other archived content by fetching the snapshot index and iterating through it. Because all of ArchiveBox's archived content is served from the same host and port as the admin panel, when archived pages are viewed the JS executes in the same context as all the other archived pages (and the admin panel), defeating most of the browser's usual CORS/CSRF security protections and leading to this issue. Version 0.9.0 contains a patch. As a mitigation for this issue would be to disable the wget extractor by setting archivebox config --set SAVE_WGET=False, ensure you are always logged out, or serve only a static HTML version of your archive.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | archivebox | all versions | 0.9.0 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for archivebox. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update archivebox to 0.9.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-45815 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2023-45815 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2023-45815. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-45815 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2023-45815 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.