CVE-2025-46886
📋 TL;DR
Adobe Experience Manager versions 6.5.22 and earlier contain a stored cross-site scripting vulnerability in form fields. Low-privileged attackers can inject malicious JavaScript that executes in victims' browsers when they visit compromised pages. 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, deface websites, or redirect users to malicious sites.
Likely Case
Low-privileged users could escalate privileges, steal session data from other users, or perform limited client-side attacks.
If Mitigated
With proper input validation and output encoding, the vulnerability would be prevented despite the underlying code flaw.
🎯 Exploit Status
Requires authenticated access but only low privileges. Stored XSS means payload persists until cleaned.
🛠️ 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. Download AEM 6.5.23 or later from Adobe. 2. Backup current instance. 3. Apply the update following Adobe's upgrade documentation. 4. Restart AEM services. 5. Verify successful upgrade.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Input Validation Filter
allImplement custom servlet filters to sanitize form field inputs before processing
Implement Java servlet filter with OWASP Java Encoder library for input sanitization
Content Security Policy
allImplement strict CSP headers to mitigate XSS impact
Add 'Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'' to HTTP headers
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Restrict low-privileged user access to form input functionality
- Implement web application firewall rules to block XSS patterns in form submissions
🔍 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 XSS payloads to confirm sanitization.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unusual form submissions with script tags
- Multiple failed XSS attempts in request logs
- Suspicious content creation by low-privileged users
Network Indicators:
- HTTP requests containing script tags in form parameters
- Unusual spikes in form submission traffic
SIEM Query:
source="aem-access.log" AND ("<script>" OR "javascript:" OR "onload=" OR "onerror=")