CVE-2026-61784

xhtml-purifier has HTML attribute-injection (sanitizer bypass) that leads to XSS

State
Published
Severity
6.1 Medium
Published
Sep 24, 2026
Updated
Sep 24, 2026
Reserved
Jul 10, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

xhtml-purifier is a Node.js library to take in raw/unknown/untrusted HTML and output cleaned, purified, trusted HTML. Versions prior to 0.4.3 do not HTML-entity-encode attribute values when serializing its sanitized output. In attributeString() (XHTMLPurifier.js, around line 148) the attribute value is concatenated directly into a double-quoted attribute without encoding. As a result, an attacker-controlled value in any allowed attribute (class, style, title, alt, src, href) can include a double-quote character to break out of the attribute and inject an additional attribute, such as a JavaScript event handler (for example onmouseover or onerror). The injected handler survives sanitization and executes when the output is rendered, which is a sanitizer bypass leading to cross-site scripting. The fix in version 0.4.3 HTML-entity-encodes attribute values before serialization.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.16.1 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/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')
  • CWE-116 Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output

Affected Products

ProductVersions
node-xhtml-purifiercstigler
  • < 0.4.3Affected

References

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