GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.4) Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in ckeditor4. A fix is available for ckeditor4 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Cross-site Scripting in CKEditor4
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 GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89.
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
GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89 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 377,166 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.
ckeditor4npmDescription
Affected packages
The vulnerability has been discovered in the core HTML processing module and may affect all plugins used by CKEditor 4.
Impact
A potential vulnerability has been discovered in CKEditor 4 HTML processing core module. The vulnerability allowed to inject malformed HTML bypassing content sanitization, which could result in executing JavaScript code. It affects all users using the CKEditor 4 at version < 4.18.0.
Patches
The problem has been recognized and patched. The fix will be available in version 4.18.0.
For more information
Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions or comments about this advisory.
Acknowledgements
The CKEditor 4 team would like to thank GHSL team member Kevin Backhouse (@kevinbackhouse) for recognizing and reporting this vulnerability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | ckeditor4 | all versions | 4.18.0npm install ckeditor4@4.18.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for ckeditor4, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update ckeditor4 to 4.18.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89 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 GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-4fc4-4p5g-6w89 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.