CVE-2025-46846
📋 TL;DR
Adobe Experience Manager versions 6.5.22 and earlier contain a stored XSS vulnerability where low-privileged attackers can inject malicious scripts into form fields. When victims browse pages containing these compromised fields, their browsers execute the attacker's JavaScript. This affects organizations using vulnerable AEM instances for content management.
💻 Affected Systems
- Adobe Experience Manager
📦 What is this software?
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Attackers could steal administrator session cookies, perform actions as authenticated users, redirect users to malicious sites, or deploy additional malware payloads.
Likely Case
Low-privileged users could escalate privileges, steal session data from other users, or deface content on the platform.
If Mitigated
With proper input validation and output encoding, the vulnerability would be prevented despite the underlying code flaw.
🎯 Exploit Status
Requires authenticated low-privileged access. Stored XSS typically has reliable exploitation once the injection point is identified.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 6.5.23 or later
Vendor Advisory: https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/experience-manager/apsb25-48.html
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Backup your AEM instance. 2. Download and apply AEM 6.5.23 or later from Adobe's distribution portal. 3. Restart the AEM service. 4. Verify the update completed successfully.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Input Validation Filter
allImplement custom servlet filters to sanitize user input in form fields
Implement Java servlet filter with OWASP Java Encoder library for input sanitization
Content Security Policy
allDeploy strict CSP headers to limit script execution
Add 'Content-Security-Policy: script-src 'self'' to HTTP response headers
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to block XSS payloads in form submissions
- Restrict low-privileged user access to content authoring interfaces and implement approval workflows
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check AEM version via CRXDE Lite or system console. If version is 6.5.22 or earlier, system is vulnerable.Check Version:
curl -u admin:password http://localhost:4502/system/console/status-productinfo | grep 'Adobe Experience Manager'Verify Fix Applied:
After patching, verify version is 6.5.23 or later and test form fields with basic XSS payloads like <script>alert('test')</script>📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unusual POST requests to form endpoints with script tags
- Multiple failed login attempts followed by form submissions
Network Indicators:
- HTTP requests containing <script> tags in form parameters
- Outbound connections to suspicious domains from AEM server
SIEM Query:
source="aem_access.log" AND ("<script" OR "javascript:" OR "onload=" OR "onerror=")