Hugo's default fenced-code-block renderer writes attribute values taken from the code-fence info string into the rendered HTML without escaping them. New in markup/internal/attributes/attributes.go converts every attribute value from a byte slice to a string as it is stored, deliberately dropping the escaping that used to happen there, and RenderAttributes in the same file escapes only values that are still byte slices, so its escaping branch is never reached and every value is written verbatim. The function's documentation states that it performs HTML escaping of string attributes, which it does not. A quote inside an attribute value in the info string therefore terminates the attribute and allows a further attribute, including an event handler, to be placed on the wrapper element, and the script runs for every visitor who loads the page. This path is reached under the default configuration, with code fences enabled and without goldmark's unsafe setting or any custom render hook. Attribute names beginning with on are filtered when the attributes are parsed, so injection is achieved through the value rather than the name.
Fix
Nothing published yet: no patch, vendor advisory or mitigation reference on NVD, no vendor advisory in the News for this CVE, not in CISA's KEV, no fixed package version. BaselineWatch does not guess at one.
Change history 1
- First seenCVSS 4.8 · gohugoNVD modified 2026-10-12 15:10
Affected (CPE criteria) 1
cpe:2.3:a:gohugo:hugo:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
References 5
- https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo Product
- https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/blob/v0.165.0/markup/goldmark/codeblocks/render.go Product
- https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/blob/v0.165.0/markup/highlight/highlight.go Product
- https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/blob/v0.165.0/markup/internal/attributes/attributes.go Product
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/hugo-through-stored-cross-site-scripting-via-unescaped-code-fence-attribute-values Third Party Advisory