CVE-2023-48219 — tinymce
MEDIUMCVE-2023-48219 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in tinymce. A fix is available for tinymce — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Special characters in unescaped text nodes can trigger mXSS in TinyMCE
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-2023-48219.
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-2023-48219 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 377,238 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
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
tinymcenpmDescription
TinyMCE is an open source rich text editor. A mutation cross-site scripting (mXSS) vulnerability was discovered in TinyMCE’s core undo/redo functionality and other APIs and plugins. Text nodes within specific parents are not escaped upon serialization according to the HTML standard. If such text nodes contain a special character reserved as an internal marker, they can be combined with other HTML patterns to form malicious snippets. These snippets pass the initial sanitisation layer when the content is parsed into the editor body, but can trigger XSS when the special internal marker is removed from the content and re-parsed. his vulnerability has been patched in TinyMCE versions 6.7.3 and 5.10.9. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | tinymce | all versions | 5.10.9npm install tinymce@5.10.9 |
| 📦npm | tinymce | ≥ 6.0.0&&< 6.7.3 | 6.7.3npm install tinymce@6.7.3 |
| .NETNuGet | TinyMCE | all versions | 5.10.9dotnet add package TinyMCE --version 5.10.9 |
| .NETNuGet | TinyMCE | ≥ 6.0.0&&< 6.7.3 | 6.7.3dotnet add package TinyMCE --version 6.7.3 |
| 🐘Packagist | tinymce/tinymce | all versions | 5.10.9composer require tinymce/tinymce:^5.10.9 |
| 🐘Packagist | tinymce/tinymce | ≥ 6.0.0&&< 6.7.3 | 6.7.3composer require tinymce/tinymce:^6.7.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for tinymce, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update tinymce to 5.10.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-48219 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-2023-48219 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-48219. 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-2023-48219 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-48219 across npm, NuGet, Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.