Lemmy: Stored XSS via markdown image alt-text in lemmy-ui html5-embed

Summary

Lemmy is a link aggregator and forum for the fediverse. Prior to lemmy-ui 0.19.19-beta.1, LemmyNet/lemmy-ui renders Markdown in src/shared/markdown.ts for post bodies, comment bodies, private messages, and community and site sidebars through mdToHtml, which returns a raw __html object that Inferno injects without a sanitizer pass. setupMarkdown configures html as false but registers markdown-it-html5-embed@1.0.0 with useImageSyntax enabled, so an image targeting video media becomes a video element whose fallback incorporates the image alt text through unescaped string replacement. The html setting does not apply to plugin-generated output, allowing crafted alt text to reach the DOM as live HTML in contexts that do not use mdToHtmlNoImages. An approved member or a remote federated instance can store such content, and a viewer who renders it may execute JavaScript in the lemmy-ui origin, exposing the viewer's session and authenticated actions. The advisory notes that Content Security Policy prevents the described exploit in production, but also states that the tested default self-hosted deployment serves no Content-Security-Policy. This issue is fixed in lemmy-ui version 0.19.19-beta.1.

Timeline

1. Aug 19, 2026, 8:18 PM UTCCVE published
2. Aug 21, 2026, 6:16 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

3. Aug 21, 2026, 6:17 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• LemmyNet lemmy

  fixed in 0.19.19-beta.1

References 4