GHSA-pqh6-8fxf-jx22

Summary

The search result rendering template (search.twig) outputs FAQ content fields result.question and result.answerPreview using Twig's | raw filter, which completely disables the template engine's built-in auto-escaping.

A user with FAQ editor/contributor privileges can store a payload encoded as HTML entities. During search result construction, html_entity_decode(strip_tags(...)) restores the raw HTML tags — bypassing strip_tags() — and the restored payload is injected into every visitor's browser via the | raw output.

This vulnerability is distinct from GHSA-cv2g-8cj8-vgc7 (affects faq.twig, bypass via regex mismatch in Filter::removeAttributes()) and is not addressed by the 4.1.1 patch.

Affected Files

| File | Location | Issue | |---|---|---| | phpmyfaq/assets/templates/default/search.twig | lines rendering result.question, result.answerPreview | (Vertical Bar) raw disables autoescape | | phpmyfaq/src/phpMyFAQ/Controller/Api/SearchController.php | search result processing loop | html_entity_decode(strip_tags(...)) restores encoded payloads | | phpmyfaq/src/phpMyFAQ/Search.php | logSearchTerm() | No HTML sanitization on stored search term (secondary, preventive) |

Details

Vulnerability A (Primary): search.twig — | raw Disables Autoescape

File: phpmyfaq/assets/templates/default/search.twig

<a title="Test" href="{{ result.url }}">{{ result.question | raw }}</a>
<small class="small">{{ result.answerPreview | raw }}...</small>

Twig's autoescape encodes all variables by default. The | raw filter unconditionally disables this protection. Both result.question and result.answerPreview are populated from database content (FAQ records and custom pages) that can contain attacker-controlled data.

Seven (7) instances of | raw exist in search.twig:

{{ result.renderedScore | raw }}
{{ result.question | raw }}
{{ result.answerPreview | raw }}
{{ searchTags | raw }}...