CVE-2019-10010
Moderate severity vulnerability that affects league/commonmark
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the PHP League CommonMark library before 0.18.3 allows remote attackers to insert unsafe links into HTML by using double-encoded HTML entities that are not properly escaped during rendering, a different vulnerability than CVE-2018-20583.
Attack profile
How easy it is to exploit
- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges needed
- None
- User interaction
- Required
What an attacker can affect
- Confidentiality
- Low
- Integrity
- Low
- Availability
- None
Exploit likelihood
What each source reports
NVD Score used
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the PHP League CommonMark library before 0.18.3 allows remote attackers to insert unsafe links into HTML by using double-encoded HTML entities that are not properly escaped during rendering, a different vulnerability than CVE-2018-20583.
- Record
CVE-2019-10010- CVSS 3.0
- 6.1 Medium
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N - CVSS 2.0
- 4.3 Medium
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N - Weakness
- CWE-79
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
CVE List No score
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the PHP League CommonMark library before 0.18.3 allows remote attackers to insert unsafe links into HTML by using double-encoded HTML entities that are not properly escaped during rendering, a different vulnerability than CVE-2018-20583.
- Record
CVE-2019-10010- Updated
- 2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2019-0649 No score
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the PHP League CommonMark library before 0.18.3 allows remote attackers to insert unsafe links into HTML by using double-encoded HTML entities that are not properly escaped during rendering, a different vulnerability than CVE-2018-20583.
- Record
EUVD-2019-0649- Updated
- 2026-11-03
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-3v43-877x-qgmq
Moderate severity vulnerability that affects league/commonmark
CVE-2019-10010
Impact
In league/commonmark 0.18.2 and below, malicious users can insert double-encoded HTML entities into their Markdown like this:
[XSS](javascript:alert%28'XSS'%29)
This library would (correctly) unescape the & entity to & during the parsing step. However, the renderer step would fail to properly re-escape the resulting : string, thus producing the following malicious HTML output:
<p><a href="javascript:alert('XSS')">XSS</a></p>
Browsers would interpret : as a : character and allow the JS to be executed when the link is clicked.
This vulnerability was present in the upstream library this project was forked from and therefore exists in all prior versions of league/commonmark.
Solution
The new 0.18.3 release mirrors the fix made upstream - we no longer attempt to preserve entities when rendering HTML attributes like href, src, title, etc.
The $preserveEntities parameter of Xml::escape() is therefore no longer used internally, so it has been deprecated and marked for removal in the next major release (0.19.0).
Credits
- Mohit Fawaz for identifying the issue
- Sebastiaan Knijnenburg and Ross Tuck for responsibly disclosing/relaying the issue
- John MacFarlane for investigating it and implementing the upstream fix we mirrored here
References
- Record
GHSA-3v43-877x-qgmq- CVSS 3.0
- 6.1 Medium
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N - Weakness
- CWE-79
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSV
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the PHP League CommonMark library before 0.18.3 allows remote attackers to insert unsafe links into HTML by using double-encoded HTML entities that are not properly escaped during rendering, a different vulnerability than CVE-2018-20583.
- Record
CVE-2019-10010- CVSS 3.0
- 6.1 Medium
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N - Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVGHSA-3v43-877x-qgmq
Moderate severity vulnerability that affects league/commonmark
CVE-2019-10010
Impact
In league/commonmark 0.18.2 and below, malicious users can insert double-encoded HTML entities into their Markdown like this:
[XSS](javascript&colon;alert%28'XSS'%29)
This library would (correctly) unescape the & entity to & during the parsing step. However, the renderer step would fail to properly re-escape the resulting : string, thus producing the following malicious HTML output:
<p><a href="javascript:alert('XSS')">XSS</a></p>
Browsers would interpret : as a : character and allow the JS to be executed when the link is clicked.
This vulnerability was present in the upstream library this project was forked from and therefore exists in all prior versions of league/commonmark.
Solution
The new 0.18.3 release mirrors the fix made upstream - we no longer attempt to preserve entities when rendering HTML attributes like href, src, title, etc.
The $preserveEntities parameter of Xml::escape() is therefore no longer used internally, so it has been deprecated and marked for removal in the next major release (0.19.0).
Credits
- Mohit Fawaz for identifying the issue
- Sebastiaan Knijnenburg and Ross Tuck for responsibly disclosing/relaying the issue
- John MacFarlane for investigating it and implementing the upstream fix we mirrored here
References
- Record
GHSA-3v43-877x-qgmq- CVSS 3.0
- 6.1 Medium
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N - Weakness
- CWE-79
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
Affected products
Affected packages
| Package | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|
league/commonmarkPackagist |
before 0.18.3 | 0.18.3 |
league/commonmarkPackagist |
before 0.18.3, plus listed versions 0.1.00.1.10.1.20.10.00.11.0 Show 41 moreShow less0.11.10.11.20.11.30.12.00.13.00.13.10.13.20.13.30.13.40.14.00.15.00.15.10.15.20.15.30.15.40.15.50.15.60.15.70.16.00.17.00.17.10.17.20.17.30.17.40.17.50.18.00.18.10.18.20.2.00.2.10.3.00.4.00.5.00.5.10.6.00.6.10.7.00.7.10.7.20.8.00.9.0 |
0.18.3 |
History
| Recorded | Changed | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| aliases | EUVD | |
| first indexed | CVE List, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV |
Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.
In short
CVE-2019-10010 is a medium vulnerability (CVSS 6.1) in Thephpleague Commonmark, published March 24, 2019. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 1.05%, the 64th percentile. Fixed in league/commonmark 0.18.3.
References
github.com/thephpleague/commonmark/issues/353
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-10010