CVE-2026-104828

HtmlUnit Neko: Mutation XSS (mXSS) in HTMLWriterFilter - TEXTAREA/TITLE entity decode without re-encode

HIGH
7.2
CVSS Score
Published: October 15, 2026 at 06:36 PM UTC
Updated: October 21, 2026 at 01:17 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorhtmlunit-neko

Using htmlunit-neko by HtmlUnit?

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Severity
HIGH7.2
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.3%
SSVC
PoC

Description

HtmlUnit Neko is an HtmlUnit adaptation of NekoHTML. Prior to 5.4.0, HTMLWriterFilter writes decoded TEXTAREA and TITLE character content without entity encoding because both elements are treated as special content. During a parse-and-serialize round trip, entity references inside these escapable raw-text elements are decoded by the parser and then emitted as raw markup by printCharacters(), changing the document's semantics. Applications that use htmlunit-neko in an HTML sanitizer, content filter, or other parse-transform-serialize pipeline can therefore turn attacker-controlled encoded text into executable markup when the output is rendered by a browser. This issue is fixed in version 5.4.0.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCPoCAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.2HIGHGitHub_M
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
CHANGED
Confidentiality
LOW
Integrity
LOW
Availability
NONE
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusDEFERRED
CWE
CWE-79

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