CVE-2026-44282 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.8) vulnerability in decidim-elections. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2026-44282 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
decidim-elections: Election question titles allow stored script execution
Real-World Exposure
decidim-electionsReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Description
A low-privilege process-scoped admin who can manage elections can store arbitrary HTML in the question statement/body without sanitization, and the public elections UI renders that value unsafely.
Technical description
This stored XSS appears because election question titles are rendered as trusted HTML instead of sanitized text. The election question editor stores question.body as a normal translatable string, and the public helper question_title returns that value with html_safe and no sanitization boundary, so any user who can edit election questions can persist markup or script-bearing payloads that later render on public election pages.
Impact
A low-privilege process-scoped admin or other election editor with question-management rights can persist JavaScript that executes in visitor's browsers on public election pages and voting booth screens.
Patches
See https://github.com/decidim/decidim/pull/16659
Workarounds
Developers should review their implementation's administrator accesses and not give access to untrustworthy users
Resources
OWASP XSS Injection
Credits
This issue was discovered in a security audit organized by the Decidim Association and made by Radically Open Security against Decidim financed by NGI.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | decidim-elections | all versions | 0.32.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for decidim-elections. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update decidim-elections to 0.32.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-44282 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 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-44282 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-44282. 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-2026-44282 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-44282 across RubyGems dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.