CVE-2025-46911: Adobe Experience Manager XSS Vulnerability

CVE-2025-46911 Overview

CVE-2025-46911 is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) versions 6.5.22 and earlier, along with AEM Cloud Service. A high-privileged attacker can inject malicious JavaScript into vulnerable form fields. The injected payload executes in a victim's browser when they navigate to the page containing the affected field. Adobe published the corresponding advisory as APSB25-48. The flaw is categorized under [CWE-79] (Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation).

Critical Impact

Attackers with elevated AEM privileges can persist malicious scripts in form fields, hijack authenticated sessions, and pivot across the security scope boundary to affect other users' browsers.

Affected Products

• Adobe Experience Manager 6.5.22 and earlier (on-premise)
• Adobe Experience Manager Cloud Service
• AEM Forms components exposing user-editable form fields

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-06-10 - CVE-2025-46911 published to the National Vulnerability Database
• 2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-46911

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability resides in Adobe Experience Manager form field handling. AEM fails to properly neutralize script content submitted to certain form fields before persisting and rendering that content back to end users. Because the payload is stored server-side, it executes for every visitor who loads the affected page.

Exploitation requires an authenticated attacker holding high privileges within AEM, such as an author or administrator with access to form authoring interfaces. Successful exploitation also depends on user interaction, meaning a victim must browse to the compromised page. The changed security scope indicates the injected script can affect resources beyond the vulnerable component's own boundary.

Root Cause

The root cause is improper output encoding of user-supplied form field values. When an authenticated author submits content containing HTML or JavaScript, AEM stores the raw input and later renders it in a context where the browser interprets it as executable script rather than data. Insufficient contextual encoding and inadequate input sanitization across the form pipeline permit persistent XSS.

Attack Vector

An attacker with privileged access authenticates to the AEM authoring environment. The attacker locates a vulnerable form field and submits a JavaScript payload as field content or configuration. AEM stores the payload without adequate sanitization. When a legitimate user, potentially another author or an end-user, loads the page containing that field, the browser parses and executes the injected script. The script runs in the victim's session context, enabling session token theft, credential harvesting through fake overlays, or unauthorized actions against the AEM instance.

No public proof-of-concept exploit is currently listed for this CVE, and the vulnerability is not present in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Refer to the Adobe Experience Manager Security Advisory (APSB25-48) for vendor-supplied technical details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-46911

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected <script> tags, event handlers such as onerror= or onload=, or javascript: URIs stored within AEM form field content in the JCR repository.
• Outbound HTTP requests from author or publish instances to unrecognized third-party domains sourced from rendered pages.
• Anomalous form field modifications made by author-level accounts outside normal change windows.

Detection Strategies

• Audit the JCR repository for form component properties containing HTML control characters, script tags, or encoded script payloads.
• Correlate AEM audit log entries for form field edits with browser-reported Content Security Policy (CSP) violation reports.
• Review web access logs on publish instances for referrer patterns indicating cross-origin script activity or session token exfiltration.

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable and centralize AEM audit logging for author actions, then forward events to a SIEM for correlation and alerting.
• Deploy CSP reporting endpoints to capture blocked inline script executions originating from AEM pages.
• Monitor privileged AEM account activity for unusual form or template modifications, particularly from new source IP addresses.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-46911

Immediate Actions Required

• Apply the security update referenced in Adobe advisory APSB25-48 to all on-premise AEM 6.5 instances and confirm AEM Cloud Service instances have received the vendor patch.
• Review and restrict membership of privileged AEM groups such as administrators and content-authors to enforce least privilege.
• Rotate session tokens and credentials for any accounts suspected of exposure to injected scripts.

Patch Information

Adobe addressed CVE-2025-46911 in the security update described in Adobe Security Bulletin APSB25-48. Administrators of on-premise AEM 6.5 deployments must install the Service Pack that supersedes 6.5.22. AEM Cloud Service customers receive the fix automatically through Adobe's managed release channel. Verify installed versions after patching by checking the AEM System Console.

Workarounds

• Enforce a strict Content Security Policy that disallows inline scripts and restricts script sources to trusted origins.
• Apply a Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule set that filters script-like payloads submitted to AEM form endpoints.
• Restrict access to the AEM author environment to a VPN or trusted network segment while patching is pending.

# Example CSP header for AEM dispatcher configuration
Header always set Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'self'; frame-ancestors 'self'; report-uri /csp-report"