GHSA-hvqh-jw65-wcpq devbridge-autocomplete has XSS in its default formatters: formatGroup and formatResult fail to escape HTML in untrusted inputs

• npm devbridge-autocomplete: < 2.0.1 → fixed in 2.0.1

Summary The default `formatGroup` and `formatResult` functions in `devbridge-autocomplete` concatenate values into HTML without escaping, allowing XSS when an attacker controls (or can taint) the suggestion data source. Details 1. `formatGroup` — `category` is interpolated raw. `src/format.ts`: ```ts function formatGroup(suggestion, category) { return '' + category + ''; } ``` If `groupBy` is used and the grouping field of any suggestion contains HTML, that HTML is executed. 2. `formatResult` — early-return branch returns `suggestion.value` raw. `src/format.ts`: ```ts function formatResult(suggestion, currentValue) { if (!currentValue) { return suggestion.value; // un-escaped } /* ... non-empty path escapes correctly ... */ } ``` The early-return branch is reached when `suggest()` renders with an empty `currentValue`, which happens with `minChars: 0` and a server that returns suggestions for an empty query. The returned string is concatenated into the container's `innerHTML`. PoC (formatGroup) ```html PoC: formatGroup XSS in jQuery-Autocomplete v2.0.0 var poisoned = [ { value: 'Apple', data: { category: "" } }, { value: 'Avocado', data: { category: 'Safe Group' } } ]; $('#ac').devbridgeAutocomplete({ lookup: poisoned, groupBy: 'category', minChars: 1 }); ``` Originally identified by an earlier human analysis; the PoC above was produced with the assistance of Claude Opus 4.7. Impact XSS in pages that render attacker-controllable suggestion data. The actual impact depends on what the embedding page has access to (cookies, session tokens, DOM), per standard reflected/stored XSS. Patch Both formatters now run their interpolated input through the browser's text-node escaping (`createElement` + `textContent`) before producing the HTML string. Fixed in version `2.0.1`.