CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2018-3741 — There is a possible XSS vulnerability in all rails-html-sanitizer gem versions below 1.0.4 for Ruby

Medium CVSS 6.1

There is a possible XSS vulnerability in all rails-html-sanitizer gem versions below 1.0.4 for Ruby. The gem allows non-whitelisted attributes to be present in sanitized output when input with specially-crafted HTML fragments, and these attributes can lead to an XSS attack on target applications. This issue is similar to CVE-2018-8048 in Loofah. All users running an affected release should either upgrade or use one of the workarounds immediately.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.1 (3.1)
Published
2018-03-30
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-79

Affected products

  • rubyonrails / html_sanitizer

Matched remediation archetype

Cross-site scripting and unsafe browser output

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Check exposure

  • Trace reflected, stored, and DOM-derived untrusted values into HTML, attributes, URLs, styles, scripts, and client-side template sinks.
  • Identify affected origins, authenticated user roles, sensitive browser capabilities, and where content is shared across tenants.
  • Review framework escaping, rich-text sanitization, legacy templates, and client-side rendering paths.

Remediate safely

  • Use context-aware framework output encoding and safe DOM APIs; keep untrusted data out of executable contexts.
  • Sanitize intentionally supported markup with a maintained allowlist policy and validate URLs and attributes separately.
  • Update affected rendering components and add tests for every output context using inert sentinel markup.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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