CVE-2025-62246: Liferay DXP Stored XSS Vulnerability

CVE-2025-62246 Overview

CVE-2025-62246 is a set of stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities affecting Liferay Portal and Liferay Digital Experience Platform (DXP). Authenticated users can inject arbitrary HTML or JavaScript into the first, middle, or last name fields of their user profile. The injected payload executes when other users view content surfaces that render those names, including page comments, blog entry comments, document and media comments, message board messages, wiki page comments, and any widget supporting user mentions.

Critical Impact

Authenticated attackers can execute arbitrary script in the browser sessions of other Liferay users, enabling session theft, forced actions, and phishing within trusted portal pages.

Affected Products

• Liferay Portal 7.4.0 through 7.4.3.111 (and older unsupported versions)
• Liferay DXP 2023.Q4.0 through 2023.Q4.5, and 2023.Q3.1 through 2023.Q3.8
• Liferay DXP 7.4 GA through update 92 (and older unsupported versions)

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-10-13 - CVE-2025-62246 published to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD)
• 2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-62246

Vulnerability Analysis

The issue is a stored XSS flaw classified under [CWE-79] (Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation). Liferay renders user identity fields (first, middle, last name) in multiple downstream contexts without adequate output encoding. Because these values persist in the user directory, a single profile update creates a payload that fires repeatedly whenever other users interact with content that displays or references the attacker's identity.

Exploitation requires an authenticated account and user interaction from a victim who views the affected content. Impact is limited to the browser context of the victim, which can include stealing session cookies not marked HttpOnly, issuing authenticated requests on behalf of the victim, defacing rendered content, or delivering social-engineering payloads under the trusted portal origin.

Root Cause

The vulnerability stems from insufficient sanitization of the firstName, middleName, and lastName user attributes at render time. Multiple widgets, including the comments subsystem and the @mentions feature, embed these values directly into the DOM without contextual HTML escaping. Any account creation or profile update endpoint that accepts these fields becomes a persistence vector for the payload.

Attack Vector

An authenticated attacker updates their profile name fields with an HTML or JavaScript payload. The attacker then posts a comment, message board reply, wiki comment, or mention that causes their name to render in a widget. When a victim loads the page, the payload executes with the victim's privileges in the Liferay origin. The attack requires network access to the portal, low privileges (any authenticated role), and victim interaction to view the rendered surface.

No verified public proof-of-concept is available. Refer to the Liferay Security Advisory CVE-2025-62246 for vendor technical details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-62246

Indicators of Compromise

• User profile records where firstName, middleName, or lastName contain HTML tags, <script> elements, javascript: URIs, or event-handler attributes such as onerror= or onload=.
• Comment, message board, wiki, or mention records referencing user accounts whose display names contain encoded or raw HTML markup.
• Outbound requests from user browsers to attacker-controlled domains originating from Liferay portal pages.

Detection Strategies

• Query the Liferay User_ table (or equivalent user store) for name columns matching regex patterns for HTML tags and JavaScript event handlers.
• Deploy a web application firewall (WAF) rule inspecting POST and PUT requests to user profile endpoints for script markup in name parameters.
• Enable Content Security Policy (CSP) reporting to surface script executions from inline handlers on portal pages.

Monitoring Recommendations

• Log and alert on modifications to user identity fields, especially bulk changes or changes made by low-privilege accounts.
• Monitor authentication and session anomalies following comment or mention interactions, such as unexpected session token reuse from new IP addresses.
• Correlate CSP violation reports with the Liferay page path and the acting user account to identify exploited surfaces.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-62246

Immediate Actions Required

• Apply the Liferay-supplied fix packs or upgrade to a patched Liferay Portal and DXP release as listed in the vendor advisory.
• Audit existing user profiles for HTML or script content in name fields and remediate offending records.
• Restrict user self-registration and profile edit permissions to trusted roles until patching is complete.

Patch Information

Liferay has published remediation guidance in the Liferay Security Advisory CVE-2025-62246. Administrators should upgrade beyond Liferay Portal 7.4.3.111, apply DXP 2023.Q4 and 2023.Q3 service pack updates that supersede the affected ranges, and move DXP 7.4 instances beyond update 92.

Workarounds

• Enforce a strict Content Security Policy that disables inline script execution on portal pages.
• Add server-side validation that rejects HTML metacharacters (<, >, ", ', &) in user name fields.
• Temporarily disable widgets that render user mentions or user-generated comments if patching cannot be scheduled immediately.

# Example Content-Security-Policy header to block inline script execution
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'self'; frame-ancestors 'self'; report-uri /csp-report