High

Cadwyn vulnerable to XSS on the docs page

  • Disclosed: 21.07.2025
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:19

Summary

The version parameter of the /docs endpoint is vulnerable to a Reflected XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attack.

PoC

  1. Setup a minimal app following the quickstart guide: https://docs.cadwyn.dev/quickstart/setup/
  2. Click on the following PoC link: http://localhost:8000/docs?version=%27%2balert(document.domain)%2b%27

Impact

Refer to this security advisory for an example of the impact of a similar vulnerability that shares the same root cause.

This XSS would notably allow an attacker to execute JavaScript code on a user's session for any application based on Cadwyn via a one-click attack.

A CVSS for the average case may be: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L

Details

The vulnerable code snippet can be found in the 2 functions swagger_dashboard and redoc_dashboard: https://github.com/zmievsa/cadwyn/blob/main/cadwyn/applications.py#L387-L413

The implementation uses the get_swagger_ui_html function from FastAPI. This function does not encode or sanitize its arguments before using them to generate the HTML for the swagger documentation page and is not intended to be used with user-controlled arguments.

python
    async def swagger_dashboard(self, req: Request) -> Response:
        version = req.query_params.get("version")

        if version:
            root_path = self._extract_root_path(req)
            openapi_url = root_path + f"{self.openapi_url}?version={version}"
            oauth2_redirect_url = self.swagger_ui_oauth2_redirect_url
            if oauth2_redirect_url:
                oauth2_redirect_url = root_path + oauth2_redirect_url
            return get_swagger_ui_html(
                openapi_url=openapi_url,
                title=f"{self.title} - Swagger UI",
                oauth2_redirect_url=oauth2_redirect_url,
                init_oauth=self.swagger_ui_init_oauth,
                swagger_ui_parameters=self.swagger_ui_parameters,
            )
        return self._render_docs_dashboard(req, cast("str", self.docs_url))

In this case, the openapi_url variable contains the version which comes from a user supplied query string without encoding or sanitisation. The user controlled injection ends up inside of a string in a <script> tag context: https://github.com/fastapi/fastapi/blob/master/fastapi/openapi/docs.py#L132

python
    f"""
    ...
    const ui = SwaggerUIBundle({{
        url: '{openapi_url}',
    """

By simply injecting a single quote we can escape from the string context and execute JavaScript like so '+alert(document.domain)+'

The resulting HTML sent back from the server contains the following injection:

python
  const ui = SwaggerUIBundle({
        url: '/openapi/flows.json?flows='+alert(document.domain)+'',

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Python (PyPI) cadwyn < 5.4.3 5.4.3

References

CVSS score 7.6/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-79
Platform
Python (PyPI)
Package
cadwyn
Disclosed
21.07.2025
Updated
11.10.2026 12:19

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - PYSEC-2025-71 - PyPA Advisory Database; CC BY 4.0

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-2gxp-6r36-m97r - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: cadwyn

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

This is the only known vulnerability of this package.

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