Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (XSS) vulnerability in leandrocp mdex allows cross-site scripting via unsanitized URL schemes in Quill Delta output.
'Elixir.MDEx':to_delta/2 converts Markdown into a Quill Delta. 'Elixir.MDEx.DeltaConverter':default_convert_node/3 in lib/mdex/delta_converter.ex copies the URL of a link, wikilink, or image node directly from the parsed Markdown into the Delta "link" or "image" attribute without applying a scheme allowlist or any normalization.
An attacker who controls the Markdown text can supply a javascript: URL (for example click) that survives verbatim into the Delta attribute. When the Delta is rendered to HTML by a downstream renderer (such as quill-delta-to-html or the Quill client), the attribute becomes an or <img src>, and the javascript: scheme executes in the browser of anyone who views the rendered content. The link and wikilink cases are the strongest vectors because javascript: in an href executes on click; the image case is lower impact because javascript: in <img src> generally does not execute in modern browsers.
This issue affects mdex: from 0.8.3 before 0.13.2.
The application must pass untrusted Markdown to 'Elixir.MDEx':to_delta/2 and then render the resulting Quill Delta to HTML with a renderer that maps the "link" and "image" attributes to href and src without applying its own URL scheme sanitization (for example quill-delta-to-html or the Quill client).
Sanitize the Quill Delta produced by 'Elixir.MDEx':to_delta/2 before rendering it: drop or blank any "link" or "image" value whose URL scheme is not in a safe allowlist (http, https, mailto, tel).