VulnerabilityPublished 13 Aug 2025

CVE-2025-50690: SpatialReference.org · Cross-site Scripting

Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.1 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.1Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 13% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: Low
Integrity: Low
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 13 Aug 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

AI-suggested

Immediate patching: Organizations using SpatialReference.org should verify that the service has been updated to the fixed commit (post 2025-05-17) and avoid using vulnerable versions.
Input validation and sanitization: For any integrations or local mirrors of SpatialReference.org data, implement strict input validation and output encoding to neutralize malicious scripts.
Use Content Security Policy (CSP): Deploy CSP headers to restrict the execution of unauthorized scripts in browsers accessing SpatialReference.org or related applications.
User awareness: Educate users about the risks of clicking on suspicious or unsolicited URLs, especially those containing search parameters.
Monitor and log: Implement monitoring to detect unusual URL patterns or repeated access attempts with suspicious query parameters.
Employ web application firewalls (WAFs): Configure WAFs to detect and block reflected XSS attack patterns targeting the search query parameter.
Segmentation and token management: Ensure session tokens are scoped and invalidated appropriately to limit the impact of session hijacking.
Encourage the SpatialReference.org maintainers to provide official patches and security advisories promptly and to consider a bug bounty program to incentivize vulnerability reporting.

Description

A Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability exists in SpatialReference.org (OSGeo/spatialreference.org) versions prior to 2025-05-17 (commit 2120adfa17ddd535bd0f539e6c4988fa3a2cb491). The vulnerability is caused by improper handling of user input in the search query parameter. An attacker can craft a specially formed URL with malicious JavaScript code, which is then reflected back and executed in the victim's browser. This flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary JavaScript in the context of the victim's session, potentially leading to session hijacking, phishing attacks, data theft, or redirection to malicious sites. The issue is exposed on publicly accessible pages, making it exploitable by an unauthenticated attacker.

Impact

For European organizations, especially those involved in geospatial data analysis, mapping, urban planning, environmental monitoring, and related sectors, this vulnerability poses a significant risk. SpatialReference.org is a commonly referenced resource in geospatial workflows, and users accessing the site from European institutions could be targeted. Exploitation could lead to compromise of user sessions, enabling attackers to impersonate legitimate users and potentially access sensitive project data or internal systems if session tokens are reused or integrated with other services. Phishing or redirection attacks could also facilitate broader social engineering campaigns targeting European users. Additionally, organizations relying on SpatialReference.org for automated queries or integrations might be indirectly affected if malicious payloads are injected and executed in their environments. The vulnerability's public exposure and ease of exploitation without authentication increase the likelihood of opportunistic attacks, which could disrupt operations or lead to data breaches within European geospatial communities.

CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #1OWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages.
Architecture and Design · Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch (opens in a new tab)
DOM-Based XSS (opens in a new tab)
Reflected XSS (opens in a new tab)
Stored XSS (opens in a new tab)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 13 Aug 2025, 15:03 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

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