GHSA-5vp3-3cg6-2rq3
## Summary `to_markdown()` is vulnerable when serializing attacker-controlled `<pre>` content. The `<pre>` handler emits a fixed three-backtick fenced code block, but writes decoded text content into that fence without choosing a delimiter longer than any backtick run inside the content. An attacker can place backticks and HTML-like text inside a sanitized `<pre>` element so that the generated Markdown closes the fence early and leaves raw HTML outside the code block. When that Markdown is rendered by a CommonMark/GFM-style renderer that allows raw HTML, the HTML executes. This is a bypass of the v1.12.0 Markdown hardening. That fix escaped HTML-significant characters for regular text nodes, but `<pre>` uses a separate serialization path and does not apply the same protection. ## Details The vulnerable `<pre>` Markdown path: - extracts decoded text from the `<pre>` subtree - opens a fenced block with a fixed delimiter of `````` - writes the decoded text directly into the output - closes with another fixed `````` Because the fence length is fixed, attacker-controlled content containing a backtick run of length 3 or more can terminate the code block. If the content also contains decoded HTML-like text such as `<img ...>`, that text appears outside the fence in the resulting Markdown and is treated as raw HTML by downstream Markdown renderers. The issue is not that HTML-like text appears inside code blocks. The issue is that the serializer allows attacker-controlled `<pre>` text to break out of the fixed fence. ## Reproduction ```python from justhtml import JustHTML payload = "<pre>```\n<img src=x onerror=alert(1)></pre>" doc = JustHTML(payload, fragment=True) # default sanitize=True print(doc.to_html(pretty=False)) # <pre>``` # <img src=x onerror=alert(1)></pre> print(doc.to_markdown()) # ``` # ``` # <img src=x onerror=alert(1)> # ``` ``` Rendered as CommonMark/GFM-style Markdown, that output is interpreted as: 1. Line 1
Properties
- ghsa_id
- GHSA-5vp3-3cg6-2rq3
- severity
- high
- summary
- JustHTML is vulnerable to XSS via code fence breakout in <pre> content
- cve_id
- GHSA-5vp3-3cg6-2rq3
- is_ghsa_only
- true
- ghsa_published
- 2026-03-24T19:22:21Z
- source_url
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-5vp3-3cg6-2rq3
- ghsa_updated
- 2026-03-24T19:22:21Z
Related Entities (4)
AFFECTS (1)
HAS_WEAKNESS (2)
REPORTED_BY (1)
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