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CVE-2026-50571EUVD-2026-111412GHSA-F4HW-W632-M6WH

WebSub: Reflected script execution through intent-verification challenges

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: none
  • Automatable: no
  • Technical impact: partial

Summary

WebSub-based subscriber applications that echo the hub.challenge value in verification responses are affected, particularly when they return it as text/html or allow MIME sniffing. An attacker could use this to run malicious scripts in a victim's browser within the subscriber's site, potentially reading private data or performing actions with the victim's session.

Summarized by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Verify details against the original sources.

Read the original description

WebSub is a W3C recommendation produced by the Social Web Working Group. In recommendation REC-websub-20180123, the intent-verification protocol requires a subscriber to echo the `hub.challenge` value, also exposed as `hub_challenge` by some frameworks, but does not require safe response media typing or disabled MIME sniffing. An attacker can initiate a subscription to obtain a callback URL and redirect a victim browser to a crafted verification request containing HTML or JavaScript. Subscribers that return the challenge as `text/html` can execute the reflected content in the subscriber origin, using a victim's existing session to read private data or perform actions, exposing `localStorage` or `sessionStorage` and browser permissions granted to that origin. An alternative uses the verification response as an attacker-controlled same-origin script resource to bypass `script-src 'self'`; this can remain possible with `application/octet-stream` when MIME sniffing is allowed. Safe media typing and `X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff` are both needed to address the described scenarios. WebSub Rocks demonstrated reflection, but the advisory does not establish practical impact on that demonstration site.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. First seen by cve.now
  3. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

  4. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • w3c websub

    REC-websub-20180123

References 2

GitHub · w3c/websub

GitHub · aaronpk/websub.rocks