CVE-2026-28338: PMD Designer has Stored XSS in VBHTMLRenderer and YAHTMLRenderer via unescaped violation messages

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2026-02-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-79

Description

PMD is an extensible multilanguage static code analyzer. Prior to version 7.22.0, PMD's `vbhtml` and `yahtml` report formats insert rule violation messages into HTML output without escaping. When PMD analyzes untrusted source code containing crafted string literals, the generated HTML report contains executable JavaScript that runs when opened in a browser. Practical impact is limited because `vbhtml` and `yahtml` are legacy formats rarely used in practice. The default `html` format is properly escaped and not affected. Version 7.22.0 contains a fix for the issue.

Affected products

pmd: before 7.22.0 — fixed in 7.22.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: pmd 7.22.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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