CVE-2026-40296

PhpSpreadsheet vulnerable to XSS in HTML writer via custom number format codes

State
Published
Severity
5.4 Medium
Published
May 6, 2026
Updated
May 7, 2026
Reserved
Apr 10, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

PhpSpreadsheet is a pure PHP library for reading and writing spreadsheet files. The HTML writer skips htmlspecialchars escaping when a cell's formatted value differs from the original value. When a cell has a custom number format containing the text placeholder @ along with any additional literal characters (for example ". @", "@ ", or "x@"), the formatter replaces @ with the cell value and adds the extra characters, causing the formatted value to differ from the original and bypassing HTML escaping entirely. An attacker who can control the cell value and number format of an uploaded spreadsheet that is later converted to HTML and displayed to other users can achieve stored cross-site scripting. This issue is fixed in versions 5.7.0, 3.10.5, 2.4.5, 2.1.16, and 1.30.4.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.4 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:NGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Affected Products

ProductVersions
PhpSpreadsheetPHPOffice
  • >= 4.0.0, <= 5.6.0Affected
  • >= 3.3.0, <= 3.10.4Affected
  • >= 2.2.0, <= 2.4.4Affected
  • >= 2.0.0, <= 2.1.15Affected
  • <= 1.30.3Affected

References

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