CVE-2025-46983 in Experience Manager
Summary
by MITRE • 06/11/2025
Adobe Experience Manager versions 6.5.22 and earlier are affected by a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability that could be abused by a low privileged attacker to inject malicious scripts into vulnerable form fields. Malicious JavaScript may be executed in a victim’s browser when they browse to the page containing the vulnerable field.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/13/2025
Adobe Experience Manager represents a comprehensive digital experience platform that serves as a cornerstone for enterprise content management and digital marketing operations. The platform's widespread adoption across organizations makes it a prime target for cyber adversaries seeking to exploit vulnerabilities that could compromise user sessions and data integrity. This particular vulnerability manifests within the form handling mechanisms of AEM's content management capabilities, where user input is processed and stored for later retrieval. The stored XSS flaw specifically impacts versions 6.5.22 and earlier, indicating that despite numerous security updates and patches, legacy deployments remain exposed to persistent threats. The vulnerability's classification as a stored XSS attack means that malicious scripts are not merely executed during a single user interaction but are persistently embedded within the application's database or storage mechanisms, creating a lasting threat vector that affects all users who encounter the compromised content.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability occurs within the form field processing pipeline where user-submitted data is not properly sanitized or encoded before being stored and subsequently rendered back to users. When an attacker with low privileges submits malicious JavaScript code through a vulnerable form field, the platform fails to adequately validate or escape the input, allowing the script to be stored in the system's backend. This stored content becomes executable when other users navigate to pages containing the vulnerable fields, creating a classic server-side stored XSS attack scenario. The attack vector exploits the fundamental principle of web application security where user input should never be trusted and must be properly validated and sanitized before being processed or displayed. The vulnerability's impact extends beyond simple script execution, as it can potentially enable session hijacking, credential theft, and other advanced persistent threats that leverage the victim's authenticated browser context to perform unauthorized actions within the AEM environment.
The operational consequences of this vulnerability present significant risks to enterprise security postures, particularly given AEM's role in managing sensitive customer data, marketing campaigns, and business-critical digital assets. Organizations utilizing affected versions of AEM may experience unauthorized access to confidential information, potential data exfiltration, and compromised user sessions that could lead to broader system infiltration. The low privilege requirement for exploitation means that even users with minimal access rights can potentially create persistent threat vectors within the system, making this vulnerability particularly dangerous for environments with less stringent access controls. Security teams face the challenge of identifying all potentially vulnerable form fields across their AEM implementations, as the stored nature of the vulnerability means that malicious content could remain undetected for extended periods. This threat landscape aligns with the ATT&CK framework's concept of credential access and persistence techniques, where attackers leverage web application vulnerabilities to establish long-term access to target systems.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability must prioritize immediate patching of affected AEM versions to the latest security releases that address the XSS flaw. Organizations should implement comprehensive input validation and output encoding mechanisms across all form fields and user input points within their AEM implementations, ensuring that all submitted content undergoes proper sanitization before storage. The implementation of Content Security Policy headers and proper HTML encoding practices can provide additional defense-in-depth measures that limit the impact of successful XSS attempts. Regular security scanning and penetration testing of AEM environments should be conducted to identify additional vulnerable components beyond the primary form fields, as similar vulnerabilities may exist in other user input handling mechanisms. Organizations should also establish robust monitoring procedures to detect anomalous user behavior and content modifications that could indicate exploitation attempts. The vulnerability's classification under CWE-79, which specifically addresses cross-site scripting flaws, underscores the importance of implementing proper input validation and output encoding as fundamental security controls that should be integrated into all web application development processes and maintenance cycles.