TinyMCE vulnerable to mutation Cross-site Scripting via special characters in unescaped text nodes
Impact
A mutation cross-site scripting (mXSS) vulnerability was discovered in TinyMCE’s core undo/redo functionality and other APIs and plugins. Text nodes within specific parents are not escaped upon serialization according to the HTML standard. If such text nodes contain a special character reserved as an internal marker, they can be combined with other HTML patterns to form malicious snippets. These snippets pass the initial sanitisation layer when the content is parsed into the editor body, but can trigger XSS when the special internal marker is removed from the content and re-parsed. Such mutations occur when serialised HTML content is processed before being stored in the undo stack, or when the following APIs and plugins are used:
Patches
This vulnerability has been patched in TinyMCE 6.7.3 by:
- ensuring that any unescaped text nodes which contain the special internal marker are emptied before removing the marker from the rest of the HTML, and
- removing the special internal marker from content strings passed to
Editor.setContent,Editor.insertContent, andEditor.resetContentAPIs to prevent them from being loaded into the editor as user-provided content.
Fix
To avoid this vulnerability:
- Upgrade to TinyMCE 6.7.3 or higher for TinyMCE 6.x.
- Upgrade to TinyMCE 5.10.9 or higher for TinyMCE 5.x.
Acknowledgements
Tiny Technologies would like to thank Masato Kinugawa of Cure53 for discovering this vulnerability.
References
For more information
Email us at infosec@tiny.cloud Open an issue in the TinyMCE repo
Affected software
Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.
| Platform | Package | Vulnerable versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Composer package | tinymce/tinymce | < 5.10.9, >= 6.0.0, < 6.7.3 | 5.10.9, 6.7.3 |
| npm package | tinymce | < 5.10.9, >= 6.0.0, < 6.7.3 | 5.10.9, 6.7.3 |
| .NET (NuGet) | TinyMCE | < 5.10.9, >= 6.0.0, < 6.7.3 | 5.10.9, 6.7.3 |
References
- https://github.com/tinymce/tinymce/security/advisories/GHSA-v626-r774-j7f8
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-48219
- https://github.com/tinymce/tinymce
- https://github.com/tinymce/tinymce/releases/tag/5.10.9
- https://github.com/tinymce/tinymce/releases/tag/6.7.3
- https://tiny.cloud/docs/release-notes/release-notes5109
- https://tiny.cloud/docs/tinymce/6/6.7.3-release-notes
- 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
- Composer, npm, .NET (NuGet)
- Package
tinymce/tinymce, tinymce, TinyMCE- Disclosed
- 15.11.2023
- Updated
- 11.10.2026 11:23
Sources and licenses
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-v626-r774-j7f8 - CC BY 4.0
Vulnerability history: tinymce/tinymce
All published vulnerabilities of this package (Composer package), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.
- Total entries
- 15
- First → latest
- 01.2021 06.2026
- Without a fix
- 0
- Exploited in attacks
- 0
Severity breakdown
- High 4
- Medium 11
Disclosures per year
- 2021: 3
- 2022: 1
- 2023: 3
- 2024: 4
- 2025: 0
- 2026: 4
-
TinyMCE vulnerable to mutation Cross-site Scripting via special characters in unescaped text nodes this entry
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