Vulnerability Database

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Total vulnerabilities in the database

Improper detection of disallowed URIs by Loofah `allowed_uri?` — loofah

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Summary

Loofah::HTML5::Scrub.allowed_uri? does not correctly reject javascript: URIs when the scheme is split by HTML entity-encoded control characters such as 
 (carriage return), 
 (line feed), or 	 (tab).

Details

The allowed_uri? method strips literal control characters before decoding HTML entities. Payloads like java
script:alert(1) survive the control character strip, then 
 is decoded to a carriage return, producing java\rscript:alert(1).

Note that the Loofah sanitizer's default sanitize() path is not affected because Nokogiri decodes HTML entities during parsing before Loofah evaluates the URI protocol. This issue only affects direct callers of the allowed_uri? string-level helper when passing HTML-encoded strings.

Impact

Applications that call Loofah::HTML5::Scrub.allowed_uri? to validate user-controlled URLs and then render approved URLs into href or other browser-interpreted URI attributes may be vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS).

This only affects Loofah 2.25.0.

Mitigation

Upgrade to Loofah >= 2.25.1.

Credit

Responsibly reported by HackOne user @smlee.

No technical information available.

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

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Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

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