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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 5.3 CVE-2026-121373 EUVD-2026-116909

Symfony: HtmlSanitizer MetaRefreshAttributeSanitizer Matches Only a Narrow Subset of the Browser Refresh Grammar (Incomplete Fix for CVE-2026-48761)

Published Nov 4, 2026 · Updated Nov 4, 2026 · Assigned by Checkmarx

Description

The Symfony HtmlSanitizer component MetaRefreshAttributeSanitizer, introduced to fix CVE-2026-48761, sanitizes the refresh URL of content attributes of meta tags using a regular expression that is too narrow, allowing sanitization to be bypassed, and resulting in potential URL redirection to untrusted sites in Symfony versions 6.1.x prior to 6.4.50, 7.x prior to 7.4.23, and 8.x prior to 8.1.11.

The shared declarative refresh steps in the WHATWG HTML Standard require a broader approach: the separator after the time may be ASCII whitespace alone, with no ; or ,, and the url= keyword is optional. Directives the browser honours, but the regular expression misses are returned unchanged, so the attacker URL skips UrlSanitizer entirely and both allowLinkSchemes and allowLinkHosts are defeated for the refresh navigation.

This is reachable under any configuration that allows meta with http-equiv and content, including the documented allowStaticElements() preset.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
sensiolabs symfony — —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 symfony 7.4.23+dfsg-1 —
Debian 13 symfony 6.4.50+dfsg-0+deb13u1 —
Debian 12 symfony No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 symfony No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS symfony No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS symfony No fix yet —
Show 4 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS symfony No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS symfony No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS symfony No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS symfony No fix yet —

References