CVE-2026-75993 in ColdFusion
Summary
by MITRE • 09/08/2026
ColdFusion is affected by a reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to inject malicious scripts into a web page, potentially gaining elevated access or control over the victim's account or session. Exploitation of this issue requires user interaction in that a victim must open a malicious file. Scope is changed.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/08/2026
The identified security flaw represents a reflected Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability within Adobe ColdFusion, specifically categorized under CWE-79 as Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation. This type of weakness occurs when an application takes untrusted data and sends it to a web browser without proper validation or escaping, allowing malicious scripts to execute in the context of the victim's session with the vulnerable website. In this specific instance, the vulnerability is reflected rather than stored, meaning the malicious script is provided as part of the request, such as through URL parameters or form inputs, and immediately returned by the server in the response without being saved to a database or persistent storage mechanism.
The operational impact of exploiting this vulnerability extends beyond simple defacement or cookie theft, as indicated by the note that scope has changed. Typically, reflected XSS is considered lower risk because it requires user interaction; however, the change in scope suggests that successful exploitation could lead to elevated access or control over the victim's account or session state. This implies that the injected script may interact with sensitive application functions, manipulate session tokens, or perform actions on behalf of the authenticated user without their explicit consent. An attacker would need to craft a malicious link or file and trick the victim into opening it, thereby triggering the execution of the embedded JavaScript code within the victim's browser environment.
From an offensive security perspective, this vulnerability aligns with MITRE ATT&CK technique T1059.007, which covers Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript. The attacker leverages the browser's native scripting capabilities to bypass same-origin policy restrictions if combined with other vulnerabilities or misconfigurations, although in a pure reflected XSS scenario, the primary goal is usually session hijacking or phishing via credential harvesting forms injected into the page. The requirement for user interaction serves as a natural barrier but does not eliminate the risk, particularly when social engineering techniques are employed to lure victims into clicking malicious links or opening compromised files that redirect to the vulnerable ColdFusion endpoint with payload parameters appended.
Mitigation strategies must focus on strict input validation and output encoding at both the application logic level and the presentation layer. Developers should ensure that all user-supplied data is validated against a whitelist of acceptable characters before processing, rejecting any input containing script tags or event handlers. Furthermore, when rendering dynamic content, it is critical to encode special HTML entities such as ampersands, less-than signs, greater-than signs, quotes, and apostrophes to prevent the browser from interpreting them as executable code. Implementing a Content Security Policy header can also provide an additional layer of defense by restricting the sources from which scripts are allowed to load or execute, thereby mitigating the impact even if some injection occurs. Regular security testing using static application security testing tools and dynamic analysis should be integrated into the development lifecycle to detect such flaws early before deployment to production environments where they pose a significant risk to user data integrity and confidentiality.