CVE-2023-48219 | Special characters in unescaped text nodes can trigger mXSS in TinyMCE

TinyMCE is an open source rich text editor. A mutation cross-site scripting (mXSS) vulnerability was discovered in TinyMCE’s core undo/redo functionality and other APIs and plugins. Text nodes within specific parents are not escaped upon serialization according to the HTML standard. If such text nodes contain a special character reserved as an internal marker, they can be combined with other HTML patterns to form malicious snippets. These snippets pass the initial sanitisation layer when the content is parsed into the editor body, but can trigger XSS when the special internal marker is removed from the content and re-parsed. his vulnerability has been patched in TinyMCE versions 6.7.3 and 5.10.9. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Published: 2023-11-15 Last update: 2026-06-17 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2023-48219 is rated Moderate Risk (40.1/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.71%). Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-48219

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 2.08% 0.71% -1.36%
2 2026-04-25 2.02% 2.08% +0.06%
3 2026-04-19 — 2.02% —

Full EPSS history (39 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-48219

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.1 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
Confidentiality (C:L)
Some sensitive info could get out, but not a total data dump.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 2.8 2.7 [email protected]
6.1 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
Confidentiality (C:L)
Some sensitive info could get out, but not a total data dump.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 2.8 2.7 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-48219

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2023-48219

GHSA-v626-r774-j7f8 · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: npm — TinyMCE vulnerable to mutation Cross-site Scripting via special characters in unescaped text nodes

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-48219

vendor priority summary link
ubuntu medium CVE-2023-48219 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (tinymce), 12 status rows across 12 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 7, needs-triage 4, ignored 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-48219

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-48219

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
tiny tinymce < 5.10.9 cpe:2.3:a:tiny:tinymce:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
tiny tinymce >= 6.0.0, < 6.7.3 cpe:2.3:a:tiny:tinymce:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2023-48219

cvelogic Threat Intelligence