craftcms/cms security advisory

CVE-2026-31859: CraftCMS vulnerable to reflective XSS via incomplete return URL sanitization

CVE-2026-31859 is a medium-severity XSS vulnerability in the PHP package craftcms/cms (CVSS 6.1), published 11 March 2026. The advisory does not name a fixed version. It can be exploited without an account.

medium 6.1 published 2026-03-11 · updated 2026-06-17

Affected versions: >= 4.15.3, <= 4.17.2
>= 5.7.5, <= 5.9.6
Fixed in: not stated
Newest release: 5.12.0
Severity: Medium · CVSS 6.1
Type: Cross-site scripting (XSS)
CWE-79, CWE-116
Exploited in the wild: Not on the CISA KEV list
checked 2026-11-04

Is your craftcms/cms version affected?

Run composer show craftcms/cms in your project, then enter the version. We check it against this and every other known craftcms/cms advisory.

Who can exploit CVE-2026-31859

Access: No account. Anyone who can send a request to an app that uses the affected code.
Interaction: A user also has to do something, such as open a link or a page the attacker prepared.

CVSS vector (scored by NVD): CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Your app is only exposed if it uses the affected part of craftcms/cms. The advisory below says which part that is. If you are not sure, upgrade anyway: it costs less than finding out.

How to fix CVE-2026-31859 in craftcms/cms

Find the installed version: composer show craftcms/cms. If you never required it yourself, composer why craftcms/cms shows which package pulls it in.
Update it: composer update craftcms/cms --with-all-dependencies.
If Composer will not go that high, your composer.json constraint is holding it back. Widen it (for example "craftcms/cms": "^5.12.0" if you can take that version), or upgrade the package that requires it.
Run composer audit. It reads the same advisory data and should no longer list CVE-2026-31859.
Commit composer.lock and deploy it. On the server, run composer install --no-dev from the lock file, not composer update.

If you cannot upgrade yet

General hardening for XSS issues while the upgrade waits. None of it replaces the fix.

Escape output in your own templates and add a Content-Security-Policy that blocks inline scripts.
Limit who can save the content the advisory names (for example rich text, SVG or form fields).
If your app does not use the affected feature, note that in your audit, but still plan the upgrade.

The CVE-2026-31859 advisory

Craft is a content management system (CMS). The fix for CVE-2025-35939 in craftcms/cms introduced a strip_tags() call in src/web/User.php to sanitize return URLs before they are stored in the session. However, strip_tags() only removes HTML tags (angle brackets) -- it does not inspect or filter URL schemes. Payloads like javascript:alert(document.cookie) contain no HTML tags and pass through strip_tags() completely unmodified, enabling reflected XSS when the return URL is rendered in an href attribute. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.9.7 and 4.17.3.

Description from the CVE record, published by GitHub (the CVE Numbering Authority), via the NVD entry for CVE-2026-31859. Advisory title: “CraftCMS vulnerable to reflective XSS via incomplete return URL sanitization”.

References

GitHub advisory GHSA-fvwq-45qv-xvhv github.com

Other craftcms/cms advisories

critical Craft CMS: Passkey login accepts replayed WebAuthn assertions 2026-08-07
medium CVE-2026-72779: Craft CMS: Arbitrary file read via SplFileObject in non-sandboxed template contexts 2026-08-06
medium CVE-2026-72782: Craft CMS: Authenticated leak of secret environment variables 2026-08-06
medium CVE-2026-72785: Craft CMS: Authorization bypass: view-only Categories user can modify category structure via structures/move-element 2026-08-06
medium CVE-2026-14794: Craft CMS: Missing authorization check allows non-admin control panel users access to user registration metrics 2026-08-06
low CVE-2026-72783: Craft CMS: Incorrect path validation could potentially lead to path traversal 2026-08-06

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Where this data comes from

Affected and fixed versions: the Packagist security advisories API (GitHub Advisory Database and FriendsOfPHP), the same data composer audit uses. Synced 2026-11-03.
Description, score, weakness and references: NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD), checked 2026-11-04. This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
Exploited-in-the-wild status: the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, checked 2026-11-04.
Compiled by Daniel Lasek at Laskyr from the sources above. The summary, “who can exploit it”, “how to fix it” and hardening sections are our plain-English reading of the record and are generated from it. The quoted description is the record's own text. Spot an error? Tell us.