GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Hex

GHSA-52mm-h59v-f3c7 earmark: Stored XSS via unescaped HTML attribute values

MEDIUM Published 2026-06-17 Modified 2026-06-18 Official page ↗
Aliases
CVE-2026-48591
Ecosystem
Hex
Packages
earmark
Severity
Moderate
CVSS vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:L/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N
Weaknesses
CWE-79, CWE-83
Reviewed
2026-06-18

Affected packages

• Hex earmark: >= 1.4.1, <= 1.5.0-pre1 (no fix yet)

Description

Improper Neutralization of Script in Attributes in a Web Page vulnerability in pragdave earmark allows stored cross-site scripting via unescaped HTML attribute values. 'Elixir.Earmark.Transform':_make_att1/2 in lib/earmark/transform.ex splices attribute values verbatim between two literal " bytes: [" ", name, "=\"", value, "\""]. Text nodes are routed through the existing escape function which encodes " as &quot;, but attribute values never visit that path. A markdown link whose URL or title contains a bare " closes the attribute early and lets the trailing bytes be parsed by the browser as fresh HTML attributes. For example, [click](http://example.com/?a=x" onerror="alert(1)) renders as click, executing arbitrary JavaScript in the victim's browser. The earmark library is no longer maintained and has been retired on Hex. No patched version will be released. All releases from 1.4.1 onward are affected, and users should migrate to a maintained Markdown library such as MDEx. This issue affects earmark from 1.4.1 onward.

Related

Alias · CVE (1)

  • CVE-2026-48591 Improper Neutralization of Script in Attributes in a Web Page vulnerability in pragdave earmark allows stored cross-site scripting via… vulnerability

Weakness · CWE (2)

  • CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation weakness
  • CWE-83 Improper Neutralization of Script in Attributes in a Web Page weakness

References