CVE-2024-53257 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.9) Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in vitess.io/vitess. A fix is available for vitess.io/vitess — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Vitess allows HTML injection in /debug/querylogz & /debug/env
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-53257.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
vitess.io/vitess🐹vitess.io/vitess🐹vitess.io/vitessReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
The /debug/querylogz and /debug/env pages for vtgate and vttablet do not properly escape user input. The result is that queries executed by Vitess can write HTML into the monitoring page at will.
Details
These pages are rendered using text/template instead of rendering with a proper HTML templating engine.
PoC
Execute any query where part of it is HTML markup, for example as part of a string. To make it easier to observe you might want to make sure the query takes a few seconds to complete, giving you time to refresh the status page.
Example query that can trigger the issue:
UPDATE users
SET
email = CONCAT("<img src=https://cataas.com/cat/says/oops>", users.idUser, "@xxx")
WHERE
email NOT LIKE '%xxx%' AND email != "[email protected]"
Result:
Impact
Anyone looking at the Vitess status page is affected. This would normally be owners / administrators of the Vitess cluster.
Anyone that can influence what text show up in queries can trigger it. This would normally be pretty much everybody interacting with a system that uses Vitess as a backend.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | vitess.io/vitess | ≥ 0.21.0-rc1&&< 0.21.1 | 0.21.1go get vitess.io/vitess@v0.21.1 |
| 🐹Go | vitess.io/vitess | ≥ 0.20.0-rc1&&< 0.20.4 | 0.20.4go get vitess.io/vitess@v0.20.4 |
| 🐹Go | vitess.io/vitess | all versions | 0.19.8go get vitess.io/vitess@v0.19.8 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for vitess.io/vitess, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update vitess.io/vitess to 0.21.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-53257 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Escape or sanitise the affected output on the server side rather than relying on client-side filtering, and add a Content-Security-Policy that blocks inline script execution so injected markup cannot run even if it reaches the page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-53257 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.