XSS in Emilstenstrom Justhtml

CVE-2026-8445

justhtml versions <= 1.11.0 (fixed in 1.12.0) do not sufficiently escape HTML-significant characters (angle brackets) in text nodes when converting a parsed document to Markdown via to_markdown(). While a small set of Markdown metacharacters are escaped, characters such as < and > are preserved, so untrusted input that is safe in to_html() — including entity-decoded text (e.g. &lt;script&gt;) or text from RCDATA/RAWTEXT-parsed elements like <title>, <textarea>, <noscript>, and <plaintext> — can be emitted as raw HTML in the Markdown output, enabling a sanitizer bypass and potential cross-site scripting when that output is rendered.

Vulnerability class: XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-8445?
CVE-2026-8445 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Emilstenstrom Justhtml, classified under Cross-site Scripting. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2026-08-23.
How severe is CVE-2026-8445?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.