CVE-2023-33962: JStachio XSS vulnerability: Unescaped single quotes

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2023-05-30 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-79

Description

JStachio is a type-safe Java Mustache templating engine. Prior to version 1.0.1, JStachio fails to escape single quotes `'` in HTML, allowing an attacker to inject malicious code. This vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary JavaScript code in the context of other users visiting pages that use this template engine. This can lead to various consequences, including session hijacking, defacement of web pages, theft of sensitive information, or even the propagation of malware. Version 1.0.1 contains a patch for this issue. To mitigate this vulnerability, the template engine should properly escape special characters, including single quotes. Common practice is to escape `'` as `&#39`. As a workaround, users can avoid this issue by using only double quotes `"` for HTML attributes.

Affected products

jstachio: before 1.0.1 — fixed in 1.0.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: jstachio 1.0.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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