Medium

Whoogle Search is a self-hosted metasearch engine. In versions 0.8.3 and prior, the `element` method in `app/routes.py` does not validate the user-controlled `src_type` and `element_url` variables and

  • Disclosed: 23.01.2024
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:20

Whoogle Search is a self-hosted metasearch engine. In versions 0.8.3 and prior, the element method in app/routes.py does not validate the user-controlled src_type and element_url variables and passes them to the send method which sends a GET request on lines 339-343 in requests.py. The returned contents of the URL are then passed to and reflected back to the user in the send_file function on line 484, together with the user-controlled src_type, which allows the attacker to control the HTTP response content type leading to a cross-site scripting vulnerability. An attacker could craft a special URL to point to a malicious website and send the link to a victim. The fact that the link would contain a trusted domain (e.g. from one of public Whoogle instances) could be used to trick the user into clicking the link.The malicious website could, for example, be a copy of a real website, meant to steal a person’s credentials to the website, or trick that person in another way. Version 0.8.4 contains a patch for this issue.

Affected software

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PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Python (PyPI) whoogle-search < 0.8.4 0.8.4

References

CVSS score 6.1/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-79
Platform
Python (PyPI)
Package
whoogle-search
Disclosed
23.01.2024
Updated
11.10.2026 12:20

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-phg6-44m7-hx3h - CC BY 4.0

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - PYSEC-2024-19 - PyPA Advisory Database; CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: whoogle-search

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Python (PyPI)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

Total entries
6
First → latest
07.2022 04.2025
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 2
  • High 1
  • Medium 3

Disclosures per year

  1. 2022: 1
  2. 2023: 0
  3. 2024: 4
  4. 2025: 1
  5. 2026: 0
  1. Whoogle Search is a self-hosted metasearch engine. In versions 0.8.3 and prior, the `element` method in `app/routes.py` does not validate the user-controlled `src_type` and `element_url` variables and this entry
    Medium · 6.1 CVE-2024-22417 < 0.8.4 0.8.4
  2. Medium · 5.4 CVE-2022-25303 < 0.7.2 0.7.2

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