CVE-2022-36020 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in typo3/html-sanitizer. A fix is available for typo3/html-sanitizer — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Bypass of Cross-Site Scripting Protection in typo3/html-sanitizer
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-36020.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-36020 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 376,715 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
typo3/html-sanitizer🐘typo3/html-sanitizer🐘typo3/cms-core🐘typo3/cms-core🐘typo3/cms🐘typo3/cmsReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The typo3/html-sanitizer package is an HTML sanitizer, written in PHP, aiming to provide XSS-safe markup based on explicitly allowed tags, attributes and values. Due to a parsing issue in the upstream package masterminds/html5, malicious markup used in a sequence with special HTML comments cannot be filtered and sanitized. This allows for a bypass of the cross-site scripting mechanism of typo3/html-sanitizer. This issue has been addressed in versions 1.0.7 and 2.0.16 of the typo3/html-sanitizer package. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | typo3/html-sanitizer | ≥ 1.0.0&&< 1.0.7 | 1.0.7composer require typo3/html-sanitizer:^1.0.7 |
| 🐘Packagist | typo3/html-sanitizer | ≥ 2.0.0&&< 2.0.16 | 2.0.16composer require typo3/html-sanitizer:^2.0.16 |
| 🐘Packagist | typo3/cms-core | ≥ 10.0.0&&< 10.4.32 | 10.4.32composer require typo3/cms-core:^10.4.32 |
| 🐘Packagist | typo3/cms-core | ≥ 11.0.0&&< 11.5.16 | 11.5.16composer require typo3/cms-core:^11.5.16 |
| 🐘Packagist | typo3/cms | ≥ 10.0.0&&< 10.4.32 | 10.4.32composer require typo3/cms:^10.4.32 |
| 🐘Packagist | typo3/cms | ≥ 11.0.0&&< 11.5.16 | 11.5.16composer require typo3/cms:^11.5.16 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for typo3/html-sanitizer, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update typo3/html-sanitizer to 1.0.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-36020 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-36020 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-36020. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-36020 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-36020 across Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.