CVE-2026-48822: Shaarli has Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via Markdown Reference Links

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-06-17 · updated 2026-06-18
Weakness: CWE-79

Description

Shaarli is a personal bookmarking service. Versions 0.16.1 and prior contain a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the Markdown-to-HTML conversion process used in the Bookmark Description field. An authenticated user can inject a malicious javascript: URI inside a Markdown link. The vulnerability originates in the filterProtocols method within BookmarkMarkdownFormatter.php.This method attempts to sanitize Markdown links by filtering dangerous protocols (such as javascript:) before rendering. It uses the following regular expression: (#]\((.*?)\)#is). This regex is designed to detect inline Markdown links, but it fails to detect Markdown reference-style links because reference-style links are resolved by the Markdown parser after preprocessing. The filterProtocols method never inspects the actual URL used in these references and as a result, an attacker can supply a javascript: URI inside a reference definition. This issue has been fixed in version 0.16.2.

Affected products

Shaarli: before 0.16.2

References

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