CVE-2026-73648rails-html-sanitizer: Possible XSS vulnerability with certain configurations

Description

rails-html-sanitizer is responsible for sanitizing HTML fragments in Rails applications. From 1.0.3 until 1.7.1, Rails::HTML::PermitScrubber restricted SVG reference elements in SVG_ALLOW_LOCAL_HREF only when they used xlink:href, even though browsers also accept the plain href attribute. Applications with non-default allowed tags that included SVG use or feImage elements could therefore permit external references; a same-origin external SVG referenced by use could execute scripts in the sanitized document's context, while feImage could load external images for tracking. Applications using the default allowed tags are not affected. This issue is fixed in version 1.7.1.

Data: CVE.org, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS, Ubuntu. Published as the sources state it, in English.

Affected products and versions

References and patches

• https://github.com/rails/rails-html-sanitizer/security/advisories/GHSA-cj75-f6xr-r4g7
• https://github.com/rails/rails-html-sanitizer/pull/223
• https://github.com/rails/rails-html-sanitizer/commit/74dcb8053e6da9921246ce71b06ad9fd65b19586
• https://github.com/rails/rails-html-sanitizer/releases/tag/v1.7.1