GHSA-fx6j-w5w5-h468

Source

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-fx6j-w5w5-h468

Import Source

https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-fx6j-w5w5-h468/GHSA-fx6j-w5w5-h468.json

JSON Data

https://api.test.osv.dev/v1/vulns/GHSA-fx6j-w5w5-h468

Aliases

CVE-2026-45669

Published

2026-05-19T15:49:25Z

Modified

2026-07-08T17:45:15Z

Severity

5.4 (Medium) CVSS_V3 - CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N CVSS Calculator
5.3 (Medium) CVSS_V4 - CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:L/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N CVSS Calculator

Summary

Nuxt: Reflected XSS in `navigateTo()` external redirect

Details

Summary

navigateTo() with external: true generates a server-side HTML redirect body containing a <meta http-equiv="refresh"> tag. The destination URL is only sanitized by replacing " with %22, leaving <, >, &, and ' unencoded. An attacker who can influence the URL passed to navigateTo(url, { external: true }) can break out of the content="…" attribute and inject arbitrary HTML/JavaScript that executes under the application's origin.

This is a different root cause from CVE-2024-34343 (GHSA-vf6r-87q4-2vjf), which addressed javascript: protocol bypass. The issue here is triggered by any valid URL containing >.

Impact

Applications that pass user-controlled input to navigateTo(url, { external: true }) — typically via a ?next= / ?redirect= query parameter used for post-login or "return to" flows — are vulnerable to reflected cross-site scripting. The injected script runs in the context of the application's origin during the server-rendered redirect response, before the meta-refresh fires.

Details

In packages/nuxt/src/app/composables/router.ts, the SSR redirect path builds an HTML response body with only " percent-encoded in the destination URL:

const encodedLoc = location.replace(/"/g, '%22')
nuxtApp.ssrContext!['~renderResponse'] = {
status: sanitizeStatusCode(options?.redirectCode || 302, 302),
body: `<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=${encodedLoc}"></head></html>`,
headers: { location: encodeURL(location, isExternalHost) },
}

The Location header is normalised through encodeURL() (which uses the URL constructor and correctly percent-encodes attribute-significant characters). The HTML body uses a narrower sanitiser. That mismatch is the root cause.

Proof of concept

Global middleware that forwards a query parameter to navigateTo:

// middleware/redirect.global.ts
export default defineNuxtRouteMiddleware((to) => {
const next = to.query.next as string | undefined
if (next) {
 return navigateTo(next, { external: true })
}
})

Request:

GET /?next=https://evil.example/x><img src=x onerror=alert(document.domain)>

Response body:

<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://evil.example/x><img src=x onerror=alert(document.domain)>"></head></html>

The > after evil.example/x terminates the content="…" attribute, and the <img onerror> tag executes JavaScript in the application's origin before any redirect occurs.

Patches

Fixed in nuxt@4.4.6 and nuxt@3.21.6 by #35052. The fix percent-encodes the full set of HTML-attribute-significant characters (&, ", ', <, >) before interpolating the URL into the meta-refresh body

Workarounds

If you can't upgrade immediately, validate user-controlled URLs before passing them to navigateTo(url, { external: true }). At minimum, normalise through new URL(input).toString() and reject inputs containing < or > (a normalised URL with these characters is malformed and safe to refuse).

Database specific

{
    "cwe_ids":  [
        "CWE-83"
    ],
    "github_reviewed":  true,
    "github_reviewed_at":  "2026-05-19T15:49:25Z",
    "nvd_published_at":  "2026-06-12T14:16:31Z",
    "severity":  "MODERATE"
}

References

Affected packages

npm / nuxt

Package

Name: nuxt; View open source insights on deps.dev
Purl: pkg:npm/nuxt

Affected ranges

Type: SEMVER
Events: Introduced

3.4.3

Fixed

3.21.6

Database specific

last_known_affected_version_range

"<= 3.21.5"

source

"https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-fx6j-w5w5-h468/GHSA-fx6j-w5w5-h468.json"