CVE-2026-66843 PUBLISHED

html_sanitize_ex HTML5 scrubber keeps attacker-supplied `<object>` elements, allowing untrusted content embedding

Assigner: EEF
Reserved: 06.08.2026 Published: 06.08.2026 Updated: 06.08.2026

Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere vulnerability in the HTML5 scrubber in rrrene html_sanitize_ex allows a remote attacker to load a document of their choosing into a trusted page via the data attribute of an <object> element in sanitized HTML. object is the one URI-bearing element in lib/html_sanitize_ex/scrubber/html5.ex never registered through allow_tag_with_uri_attributes/3, and its only guard is a prefix match on lowercase "javascript:", so mixed-case variants, data: URIs, protocol-relative URLs and same-origin paths all survive.

This is not unconditional cross-site scripting. A javascript: URL does not execute through <object data> in current browsers, data: documents load in an opaque origin, and host-origin script execution additionally requires the application to serve attacker-controlled content from a same-origin path.

This issue affects html_sanitize_ex: from 0.3.1 before 1.5.3.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N
CVSS Score: 2.3

Product Status

Vendor rrrene
Product html_sanitize_ex
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0.3.1 to 1.5.3 (excl.)
Vendor rrrene
Product html_sanitize_ex
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 8976d64ea0b77d26093a94a43ec48a3978e8d028 to bec27fec4de99e40c68c4285a610e09e791a3eaf (excl.)

Affected Configurations

Only HtmlSanitizeEx.html5/1, and custom scrubbers declared with use HtmlSanitizeEx, extend: :html5, allow the object element, and the sanitized output must be rendered to other users.

Script execution in the host origin additionally requires the application to serve attacker-controlled HTML from a same-origin path, such as an uploads directory served as text/html.

Workarounds

Sanitize with basic_html/1, markdown_html/1 or strip_tags/1, none of which allow object, or define a custom scrubber that omits it.

A Content-Security-Policy of object-src 'none' blocks an injected <object> from loading, and hosting user uploads on a separate origin removes the escalation path.

Credits

  • Peter Ullrich finder
  • René Föhring remediation developer
  • Jonatan Männchen / EEF analyst

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-829 Inclusion of Functionality from Untrusted Control Sphere CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-175 Code Inclusion