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PYSEC-2026-2527
No affected components available
Impact
This is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the website and author comment fields. The website field was HTML-escaped using quote=False, which left single and double quotes unescaped. Since the frontend inserts the website value directly into a single-quoted href attribute via string concatenation, a single quote in the URL breaks out of the attribute context, allowing injection of arbitrary event handlers (e.g. onmouseover, onclick).
The same escaping was missing entirely from the user-facing comment edit endpoint (PUT /id/<id>) and the moderation edit endpoint (POST /id/<id>/edit/<key>).
Any visitor to a page embedding isso comments is impacted. No authentication or interaction beyond mouse movement is required to trigger a payload — an attacker can post a comment anonymously (moderation is off by default) with a crafted website URL, and the payload persists in the database and fires on every page load. With the full-page invisible overlay technique described in the report, the victim only needs to move their mouse.
Patches
The issue is fixed in commit 3cf27c2. Users should upgrade to a version containing that commit once released. The fix applies html.escape(..., quote=True) to the website field across all three write paths (POST /new, PUT /id/<id>, POST /id/<id>/edit/<key>), and adds input validation and escaping to the moderation edit endpoint which previously had neither.
Workarounds
Enabling comment moderation (moderation = enabled = true in isso.cfg) prevents unauthenticated users from publishing comments, raising the bar for exploitation. However, it does not fully mitigate the issue since a moderator activating a malicious comment would still expose visitors. There is no configuration-only workaround that fully prevents the vulnerability.
Resources
- https://docs.python.org/3/library/html.html#html.escape — note the quote parameter
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. The attacker needs the user to perform some action, like clicking a link. The vulnerability can affect other systems as well, not just the initial system. There is a low impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a low impact on the integrity of the data.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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