CVE-2025-70296: Mealie Stored XSS Vulnerability

CVE-2025-70296 Overview

A stored HTML injection vulnerability exists in the Recipe Notes rendering component of Mealie 3.3.1. This flaw allows remote authenticated users to inject arbitrary HTML content, resulting in user interface redressing within the recipe view. The vulnerability enables attackers with valid credentials to persistently alter the appearance and behavior of recipe pages, potentially misleading other users or facilitating further attacks.

Critical Impact

Authenticated attackers can inject persistent HTML content into recipe notes, enabling UI redressing attacks that may deceive users or serve as a vector for more sophisticated client-side attacks.

Affected Products

• Mealie 3.3.1
• Mealie Recipe Notes Rendering Component

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-02-11 - CVE CVE-2025-70296 published to NVD
• 2026-02-12 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-70296

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability resides in Mealie's Recipe Notes rendering component, where user-supplied input is not properly sanitized before being rendered in the browser. When authenticated users create or edit recipe notes, the application fails to adequately filter or encode HTML markup, allowing arbitrary HTML elements to be stored and subsequently rendered to all users viewing the affected recipe.

This stored HTML injection vulnerability (CWE-77: Command Injection) enables attackers to manipulate the visual presentation of recipe pages. While the immediate impact appears limited to UI manipulation, such vulnerabilities can serve as stepping stones for more severe attacks including phishing, credential harvesting through fake login forms, or clickjacking attacks.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability is improper input validation and output encoding in the Recipe Notes rendering component. The application accepts HTML content from authenticated users without adequate sanitization, and when displaying stored notes, it renders the HTML directly in the browser context rather than treating it as plain text or properly escaping special characters.

Attack Vector

The attack is network-based and requires low privileges (authenticated user access). An attacker must first authenticate to the Mealie application, then navigate to a recipe's notes section. By crafting malicious HTML payloads within the notes field, the attacker can inject content that persists in the database and renders for all subsequent viewers of that recipe.

The injected HTML could include manipulated UI elements, hidden iframes, or styled overlays designed to trick users into taking unintended actions. Since the attack requires authentication but no user interaction from victims viewing the page, it poses a moderate risk in multi-user Mealie deployments.

For detailed technical analysis and proof-of-concept information, refer to the GitHub CVE-2025-70296 Details repository.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-70296

Indicators of Compromise

• Unusual HTML tags or attributes appearing in recipe notes content within the Mealie database
• User reports of unexpected visual elements, overlays, or UI changes when viewing recipes
• Audit logs showing repeated modifications to recipe notes by specific users

Detection Strategies

• Implement content inspection rules to identify HTML tags in recipe note fields during database queries
• Monitor application logs for suspicious patterns in user-submitted content to the notes endpoint
• Deploy web application firewalls (WAF) configured to detect HTML injection attempts in POST requests to recipe endpoints

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable verbose logging for the Recipe Notes component to capture all user modifications
• Conduct periodic database audits to identify stored content containing unexpected HTML markup
• Implement real-time alerting for modifications to recipes by users who don't own them

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-70296

Immediate Actions Required

• Review all existing recipe notes in your Mealie instance for injected HTML content
• Restrict recipe editing permissions to trusted users only until a patch is applied
• Consider implementing network segmentation to limit access to the Mealie instance to authorized networks

Patch Information

A fix has been developed and is available via GitHub Pull Request #6743. Users should monitor the Mealie project for an official release incorporating this fix and upgrade promptly when available. For ongoing discussion and updates regarding this vulnerability, see the GitHub Issue #6690 Discussion.

Workarounds

• Implement a reverse proxy with content filtering to strip HTML tags from recipe notes responses
• Restrict user registration and limit authentication to trusted individuals
• Deploy a WAF rule to sanitize input containing HTML tags before it reaches the Mealie application
• Manually sanitize the database by removing or encoding HTML content in existing recipe notes

# Example: Database query to identify potentially malicious content
# Run against your Mealie database to find notes containing HTML tags
# Note: Adjust table/column names based on your Mealie version

# Search for common HTML injection patterns
grep -E '<[a-zA-Z]|<|javascript:|onerror|onclick' /path/to/mealie/data/*.json

# For PostgreSQL deployments, check for HTML in notes
# SELECT id, notes FROM recipes WHERE notes ~ '<[^>]+>';