CVE-2025-53486 | WikiCategoryTagCloud: Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via linkstyle attribute in parser function

The WikiCategoryTagCloud extension is vulnerable to reflected XSS via the linkstyle attribute, which is improperly concatenated into inline HTML without escaping. An attacker can inject JavaScript event handlers such as onmouseenter using carefully crafted input via the {{#tag:tagcloud}} parser function, resulting in arbitrary JavaScript execution when a victim hovers over a link in the category cloud. The vulnerability exists because the linkstyle parameter is only passed through Sanitizer::checkCss() (which does not escape HTML) and is then directly inserted into a style attribute using string concatenation instead of Html::element or Html::openElement. This issue affects Mediawiki - WikiCategoryTagCloud extension: from 1.39.X before 1.39.13, from 1.42.X before 1.42.7, from 1.43.X before 1.43.2.

Published: 2025-07-07 Last update: 2026-04-15 Assigner: c4f26cc8-17ff-4c99-b5e2-38fc1793eacc Source: c4f26cc8-17ff-4c99-b5e2-38fc1793eacc

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2025-53486 is rated Low Risk (36.9/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.21%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

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-2025-53486

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 2026-05-03 0.06% 0.21% +0.15%
2 2026-03-23 0.02% 0.06% +0.04%
3 2025-12-03 0.02%

Full EPSS history (5 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-53486

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.4 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/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:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
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.
2.3 2.7 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-53486

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-53486

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
No affected products in dataset.

References for CVE-2025-53486

cvelogic Threat Intelligence