CVE-2022-44070 is a medium-severity Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting Zenario CMS version 9.3.57186. The vulnerability arises from insufficient input sanitization or output encoding in the handling of News articles within the CMS, allowing an attacker with limited privileges to inject malicious scripts. Specifically, the vulnerability requires an attacker to have some level of authenticated access (PR:L) and involves user interaction (UI:R), such as a victim clicking a crafted link or viewing a maliciously crafted news article. The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.4, reflecting its moderate impact on confidentiality and integrity, with no impact on availability. The attack vector is network-based (AV:N), and the scope is changed (S:C), meaning the vulnerability can affect resources beyond the initially vulnerable component. Exploitation could lead to partial compromise of user data confidentiality and integrity, such as session hijacking, defacement, or unauthorized actions performed in the context of the victim user. No public exploits or patches are currently known, but the presence of this vulnerability in a CMS used for content management poses a risk of website defacement, phishing, or distribution of malicious content. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-79, which is the standard identifier for XSS issues. Since Zenario CMS is a niche content management system, detailed information about affected versions and vendor specifics is not provided, but the vulnerability is confirmed in version 9.3.57186.

For European organizations using Zenario CMS 9.3.57186, this vulnerability could lead to unauthorized script execution in the browsers of users viewing compromised news articles. This could result in theft of session tokens, redirection to malicious sites, or unauthorized actions performed on behalf of legitimate users. Organizations relying on Zenario CMS for public-facing websites or internal portals risk reputational damage, data leakage, and potential regulatory non-compliance under GDPR if personal data is exposed or manipulated. The requirement for authenticated access reduces the risk from anonymous attackers but does not eliminate it, especially if user accounts have weak credentials or if social engineering is used to lure users into interacting with malicious content. The scope change indicates that the impact could extend beyond the CMS itself, potentially affecting integrated systems or user sessions. The lack of known exploits in the wild suggests limited active targeting but also means organizations should proactively address the vulnerability before exploitation occurs.

1. Immediate mitigation should include restricting user permissions to the minimum necessary, especially limiting who can create or edit News articles in Zenario CMS. 2. Implement strict input validation and output encoding on all user-supplied content fields within the CMS, particularly those related to News articles, to neutralize malicious scripts. 3. Deploy Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to restrict the execution of unauthorized scripts in browsers accessing the CMS content. 4. Monitor CMS logs for unusual editing activity or injection attempts and establish alerting for suspicious behavior. 5. If possible, upgrade to a patched version of Zenario CMS once available or apply vendor-provided fixes. 6. Educate users about the risks of interacting with unexpected or suspicious content, especially authenticated users with editing privileges. 7. Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing focused on web application vulnerabilities, including XSS, to identify and remediate similar issues proactively. 8. Consider isolating the CMS environment or using web application firewalls (WAF) with custom rules to detect and block XSS payloads targeting the News article functionality.