CVE-2018-8048 Cross-site Scripting in loofah

What is CVE-2018-8048?

CVE-2018-8048 is a medium-severity cross-site scripting vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 27 Mar 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

In the Loofah gem through 2.2.0 for Ruby, non-whitelisted HTML attributes may occur in sanitized output by republishing a crafted HTML fragment.

Weakness: CWE-79

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-8048?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including loofah and nokogiri. It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Loofah Project Loofah.

How do I fix CVE-2018-8048?

Upgrade loofah to 2.2.1 or later.

Escape output for the context it lands in and set a strict Content Security Policy. Upgrading the affected component is the real fix. More about Cross-site scripting.

Is CVE-2018-8048 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-8048 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-8048, DSA-4171-1, GHSA-x7rv-cr6v-4vm4, SUSE-SU-2019:2209-1.