Improper detection of disallowed URIs by Loofah `allowed_uri?`
Key facts
- Attack vector
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- Privileges required
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- User interaction
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- Attack complexity
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- Impact type
- Cross-site scripting
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
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- Fix status
- Fixed
No CVSS vector from any source. Fix status from GitHub. Impact type from CWE-79.
Summary
## 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`.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | loofah (RubyGems) | 2.25.0 to before 2.25.1 | 2.25.1 | Patch available | GHSA-46fp-8f5p-pf2m |
- loofah (RubyGems) Vendor— Affected 2.25.0 to before 2.25.1 Fixed in 2.25.1 Patch available GHSA-46fp-8f5p-pf2m
Remediation
- Fix · GHSA-46fp-8f5p-pf2m loofah (RubyGems) Fixed in 2.25.1 Advisory →
Timeline
- 2026-10-03 Threatist record created from GHSA-46fp-8f5p-pf2m
References
Sources
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