CVE-2025-46877: Adobe Experience Manager XSS Vulnerability

CVE-2025-46877 Overview

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) versions 6.5.22 and earlier contain a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability [CWE-79]. A low-privileged attacker can inject malicious JavaScript into vulnerable form fields. When a victim browses to a page containing the affected field, the injected script executes in the victim's browser context.

The vulnerability affects both on-premises AEM deployments and AEM as a Cloud Service instances. Adobe published fix guidance in security advisory APSB25-48.

Critical Impact

Authenticated attackers can persistently store malicious scripts that execute against any user who views the affected form, enabling session compromise, credential theft, or unauthorized actions within AEM.

Affected Products

• Adobe Experience Manager (on-premises) 6.5.22 and earlier
• Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service (AEM CS)
• AEM form components that render user-supplied field data

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-06-10 - CVE-2025-46877 published to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD)
• 2025-06-10 - Adobe published security advisory APSB25-48
• 2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-46877

Vulnerability Analysis

The flaw is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) weakness in Adobe Experience Manager form-handling components. AEM stores attacker-controlled input without sufficient output encoding, and later renders that input as executable content within pages served to other users.

The attack requires low privileges and user interaction, meaning an authenticated author or contributor role can plant the payload that then triggers when another user loads the affected page. Because AEM commonly serves both authoring and delivery surfaces, script execution can span administrative consoles and end-user experiences. The scope change component indicates the injected script can affect resources beyond the initially vulnerable component, including cookies, tokens, and DOM elements belonging to the parent application context.

Root Cause

The root cause is improper neutralization of input during web page generation [CWE-79] in vulnerable AEM form fields. Field data submitted through the affected components is persisted server-side and later reflected into HTML output without HTML entity encoding or context-aware sanitization. This allows <script> tags, event handlers such as onerror and onload, and JavaScript URI schemes to survive intact and execute when the page is rendered.

Attack Vector

An authenticated attacker with author-level or contributor-level access submits a crafted payload into an affected form field within AEM. The payload is stored in the AEM content repository. When a subsequent user, potentially an administrator or higher-privileged content reviewer, navigates to the page displaying that field, the browser parses and executes the malicious JavaScript.

Exploitation can be used to hijack authenticated AEM sessions, exfiltrate CSRF tokens, perform actions on behalf of the victim, or pivot to further attacks against the AEM authoring environment. No proof-of-concept exploit is publicly listed for this CVE, and it is not on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-46877

Indicators of Compromise

• Form field content in the AEM repository containing HTML tags, <script> blocks, or event-handler attributes such as onerror=, onload=, or onmouseover=
• Unexpected outbound requests from author or publish instances to attacker-controlled domains following page loads
• Session tokens or login-token cookies observed in web server referrer logs or third-party telemetry
• Modifications to form components performed by low-privileged accounts outside of normal change windows

Detection Strategies

• Query the JCR (Java Content Repository) for stored property values containing script-like patterns using AEM query tools or content audits
• Enable and review AEM audit logs for content modifications on form components, filtering by low-privileged user accounts
• Deploy a Content Security Policy (CSP) in report-only mode to surface inline script executions on delivery instances
• Correlate Dispatcher and web server access logs with unusual JavaScript-triggered request patterns

Monitoring Recommendations

• Monitor AEM error.log and request.log for anomalous rendering errors on pages containing form components
• Alert on authenticated sessions performing bulk edits to shared form fields within short time windows
• Track user-agent and geolocation drift for author accounts that recently modified form content
• Ingest AEM logs into a centralized analytics platform for cross-source correlation with endpoint telemetry

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-46877

Immediate Actions Required

• Apply the Adobe Experience Manager updates referenced in Adobe Security Advisory APSB25-48
• Audit author and contributor role assignments and revoke access for accounts that do not require content editing privileges
• Review recent form component edits in the JCR for stored HTML or JavaScript payloads and sanitize affected nodes
• Enforce a strict Content Security Policy on both author and publish tiers to constrain inline script execution

Patch Information

Adobe released fixed builds for both on-premises AEM (versions after 6.5.22) and AEM as a Cloud Service. Refer to Adobe Security Advisory APSB25-48 for the exact service pack, cumulative fix pack, and cloud service release numbers that address CVE-2025-46877. Cloud Service customers on current release channels receive the fix automatically.

Workarounds

• Restrict author and contributor permissions on components that render user-supplied field data until patches are applied
• Configure AEM Dispatcher rules to filter or reject requests containing script tags or JavaScript event handlers in form parameters
• Deploy a web application firewall (WAF) rule set targeting stored XSS payload patterns on AEM authoring endpoints
• Apply a Content-Security-Policy response header that disallows inline scripts and restricts script sources to trusted origins

# Example Content-Security-Policy header for AEM Dispatcher / web tier
Header always set Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'nonce-{RANDOM}'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'self'; frame-ancestors 'self'"