Stored cross-site scripting vulnerability in GitHub Enterprise Server allowed HTML attribute injection via the Markdown rendering pipeline

Summary

A stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability was identified in GitHub Enterprise Server that allowed an authenticated attacker to inject arbitrary HTML attributes into rendered Markdown because the Markdown rendering pipeline rewrote quote characters in already-sanitized HTML without re-sanitizing the result. Crafted Markdown could abuse same-origin JavaScript gadgets to bypass Content Security Policy and gain control of the page DOM when viewed by another user. Successful exploitation could allow an attacker to read content visible to the victim, extract embedded CSRF tokens, perform state-changing actions as the victim, and exfiltrate data through same-origin writes. The payload could also propagate to repositories and organizations where the victim had write access. This vulnerability affected supported GitHub Enterprise Server releases in the 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20, 3.21, and 3.22 series and was fixed in versions 3.22.1, 3.21.6, 3.20.8, 3.19.12, 3.18.15, and 3.17.21. This vulnerability was reported via the GitHub Bug Bounty program.

Timeline

1. Sep 22, 2026, 8:43 PM UTCCVE published
2. Sep 23, 2026, 3:05 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

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

3. Sep 23, 2026, 3:05 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• GitHub Enterprise Server

  From 3.17.0 · fixed in 3.17.21; From 3.18.0 · fixed in 3.18.15; From 3.19.0 · fixed in 3.19.12; From 3.20.0 · fixed in 3.20.8; From 3.21.0 · fixed in 3.21.6; From 3.22.0 · fixed in 3.22.1

References 6