OFFLINE
Awaiting data
Security intelligence
CriticalCritical vulnerability

CVE-2026-75828: Grav: detectXss() misses an event-handler attribute after an unpaired quote in an unquoted attribute value, giving stored XSS

GitHub Advisories · officialPublished Sep 17, 2026Risk 50/100

## Affected versions and vulnerable location - Confirmed on grav core at `78ebfc1` (tag 2.0.13). - Detector: `system/src/Grav/Common/Security.php:290`, the `on_events` regex, run via `patternMatches()` (`:315-330`). - The `on_events` pattern at HEAD: `#<(?:"[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^>"'])*?(?:[\s\x00-\x20"'/]|"[^"]*"|'[^']*')on\s*[a-z]+\s*=#iu` - Sole save-time guard for non-super content: `Validation::checkSafety()` (`system/src/Grav/Common/Data/Validation.php:160` scalars, `:165` arrays), invoked per field from `BlueprintSchema::validate` -> `Validation::checkSafety` (`system/src/Grav/Common/Data/BlueprintSchema.php:248`). `security.xss_whitelist: [admin.super]` exempts only super-admins (`Validation.php:148`). ## Root cause (distinct from GHSA-269c) GHSA-269c hardened the tag-body scan to be quote-aware so a `>` inside a paired quoted attribute value is treated as data, not a tag close. That same quote-awareness opened a new gap: the regex treats ANY `"` or `'` as a string delimiter, but HTML only enters a quoted-value state when a quote appears immediately after `=`. A single unpaired quote sitting inside an unquoted attribute value is, to the browser, just a value character; to the regex it is an unterminated string that neither `[^>"']` nor `"[^"]*"` can consume, so the lazy tag-body scan cannot advance past it to reach the following ` on...=` handler. No alignment matches and `detectXss()` returns null. ## Proof (executed) The detector was replicated verbatim (the `on_events` regex plus `patternMatches`) with the shipped `system/config/security.yaml` defaults and run under PHP. Observed: ```text baseline <img src=x onerror=alert(1)> => blocked (on_events) GHSA-269c <img src=x title=">" onerror=alert(1)> => blocked (on_events) # prior fix works BYPASS A <img src=x" onerror=alert(1)> => PASSES (no XSS detected) BYPASS B <img title=x" onerror=alert(1)> => PASSES (no XSS detected) BYPASS C <a href=x" onmouseover=alert(1)>x</a> => PASSES (no XSS detected) BYPASS D <img src=x' onerror=alert(1)> => PASSES (no XSS detected) BYPASS E <div id=x" onmouseover=alert(1)>hover</div> => PASSES (no XSS detected) ``` Browser tokenization of `<img src=x" onerror=alert(1)>`: `src` takes the unquoted value `x"` (space ends it), `onerror` is parsed as a separate live attribute, `src` 404s and `onerror` fires. None of the other rules cover it: `img`/`a`/`div` are not in `xss_dangerous_tags`, there is no `javascript:`/`data:` scheme and no `style`/`url`/`expression`. ## Reachability `checkSafety()` is the only save-time XSS screen for a non-super editor. The pages blueprint validates `header.title` (`type: text`) and page `content` (markdown/textarea) with `xss_check` on, so a bare `onerror=` is rejected but the payload above is stored verbatim. Page content is emitted through `{{ page.content|raw }}` and raw inline HTML passes Parsedown by default (`markdown.escape_markup: false`), so the handler runs for every visitor. The same detector core also backs `Security::detectXssInEditorContent()` (the GHSA-2c4f render-time-Twig save gate; callers `Page.php:1359`, `Flex/Types/Pages/PageObject.php:194`), the `detectXssFromPages()` admin scanner (`Admin.php:2096`), and the `xss()` Twig function, so all of them report the payload clean. Auth required: an authenticated content editor with page/form edit rights but WITHOUT `admin.super`. ## Suggested fix Make the tag-body scan treat a quote as a delimiter only in the after-`=` position, or normalize unquoted attribute values before the handler scan, so an unpaired quote inside an unquoted value cannot mask a following `on...=`. A targeted addition: also flag ` on<name>=` sequences that appear after a lone unbalanced quote within the same tag. Because `detectXss()` is a denylist, consider additionally encoding `"`/`'` in stored non-super content, or defaulting `markdown.escape_markup: true` for non-super authors. ## Severity and CVSS reasoning Suggested severity: High (matches GHSA-269c and the other stored-XSS advisories in this codebase). Suggested CVSS:3.1 vector: `CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N` (8.7). - `PR:L`: a non-super editor account. - `UI:R`: a visitor renders the page (for `onerror` the image simply loads/fails automatically). - `S:C/C:H/I:H`: script in the site origin against every visitor, including admins viewing the content. ## How I found it and a note on tooling I read `detectXss()` and reasoned about the difference between the HTML tokenizer's quoted-value state and the regex's string handling, then replicated the exact `on_events` pattern and `patternMatches()` with the shipped default config and ran the payloads to confirm the bypass and that the GHSA-269c payload is still blocked. I used AI assistance for the analysis and drafting and verified the detector behavior by execution. This is executed against a faithful replica of the detector with production config, not against a full running Grav site.

Upgrade affected packages to a patched version: getgrav/grav 2.0.15.

Vendor
Not specified
Product
getgrav/grav
Exploitation
none known
Evidence
official
CVSS
8.7

This record is attributed to GitHub Advisories. Exploitation status and remediation guidance are kept separate from the vulnerability's technical severity.

Open primary source