CVE-2025-48939VulnerabilityPublished 3 Jul 2025

CVE-2025-48939: AmauriC tarteaucitron.js · Improper Neutralization of Special Elements

Affects AmauriC tarteaucitron.jsSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.2 Medium : upgrade to 1.22.0 when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 06:26 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.2Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 10% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 1.22.0

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:L

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: Low
Availability: Low

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the impacted component are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 3 Jul 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-26.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade amauric/tarteaucitron.js to 1.22.0.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubamauric/tarteaucitron.js`pkg:github/amauric/tarteaucitron.js`Other threats	Affected <1.22.0	Fixed in 1.22.0

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

European organizations should immediately upgrade all instances of tarteaucitron.js to version 1.22.0 or later, where the vulnerability has been patched. Beyond upgrading, organizations should conduct thorough security reviews of their web applications to identify and remediate any HTML injection or cross-site scripting vulnerabilities that could enable an attacker to exploit this issue. Implementing Content Security Policy (CSP) headers can help restrict the domains from which scripts can be loaded, mitigating the risk of malicious CDN substitution. Additionally, validating and sanitizing all user inputs and HTML content before rendering is critical to prevent injection attacks. Organizations should also monitor their web traffic and script loading behavior for anomalies that might indicate exploitation attempts. Finally, maintaining an inventory of third-party JavaScript libraries and ensuring timely updates is essential for ongoing security hygiene.

Description

tarteaucitron.js is a compliant and accessible cookie banner. Prior to version 1.22.0, a vulnerability was identified in tarteaucitron.js where document.currentScript was accessed without verifying that it referenced an actual <script> element. If an attacker injected an HTML element, it could clobber the document.currentScript property. This causes the script to resolve incorrectly to an element instead of the <script> tag, leading to unexpected behavior or failure to load the script path correctly. This issue arises because in some browser environments, named DOM elements become properties on the global document object. An attacker with control over the HTML could exploit this to change the CDN domain of tarteaucitron. This issue has been patched in version 1.22.0.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of this vulnerability depends largely on the deployment of tarteaucitron.js on their public-facing websites or internal portals. Since tarteaucitron.js is designed to help with cookie consent compliance, it is likely used by organizations aiming to meet GDPR requirements, which are stringent in Europe. An attacker exploiting this vulnerability could manipulate the script loading process, potentially redirecting the script source to a malicious CDN or causing the cookie banner to malfunction. This could lead to incorrect cookie consent handling, undermining compliance efforts and exposing organizations to regulatory penalties. Additionally, if the script is loaded from an attacker-controlled source, it could be used as a vector for further client-side attacks, such as delivering malicious JavaScript payloads to users. This could compromise user trust, damage brand reputation, and potentially lead to broader security incidents. However, exploitation requires the attacker to have the ability to inject HTML elements into the affected pages, which may limit the practical risk unless combined with other vulnerabilities like XSS. The vulnerability could also disrupt website availability or user experience if the cookie banner fails to load correctly.

CWE-138Improper Neutralization of Special Elements (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessOWASP Top 10 A03:2021: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product receives input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could be interpreted as control elements or syntactic markers when they are sent to a downstream component.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Implementation
Developers should anticipate that special elements (e.g. delimiters, symbols) will be injected into input vectors of their product. One defense is to create an allowlist (e.g. a regular expression) that defines valid input according to the requirements specifications.
Implementation · Input Validation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
Implementation
Use and specify an appropriate output encoding to ensure that the special elements are well-defined. A normal byte sequence in one encoding could be a special element in another.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Server Side Request Forgery Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards (opens in a new tab)
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.2.2 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
HTTP Request Splitting (opens in a new tab)
Command Delimiters (opens in a new tab)
HTTP Response Splitting (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 3 Jul 2025, 16:57 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-138

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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