Symfony has an HtmlSanitizer allowLinkHosts() / allowMediaHosts() Bypass via URL-Parser Differentials and <area> Misclassification
Date: 2026-05
Affected: composer/symfony/symfony, composer/symfony/symfony, composer/symfony/symfony
Attack vector: other
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Medium
CVE: CVE-2026-45066
CWE: CWE-184
CWE-436

### Description `symfony/html-sanitizer` lets applications sanitise untrusted HTML. The configuration methods `allowLinkHosts([...])` and `allowLinkSchemes([...])` are intended to restrict `<a href>` targets to an allowlist of hosts/schemes; `allowMediaHosts()` / `allowMediaSchemes()` do the same for `<img src>` etc. Three distinct bypasses allow a content author to smuggle off-allowlist URLs past these checks. First, `UrlSanitizer::parse()` parses the input following RFC-3986, while browsers follow the WHATWG URL Standard which normalises `\` to `/` before parsing the authority of "special" schemes; so an input like `https://evil\@trusted.com/` parses with host `trusted.com` server-side but navigates to `https://evil/` in the browser. Second, WHATWG collapses any run of `/` after the scheme into `//`, while RFC-3986 does not; so `https:/evil.com/` and `https:///evil.com/` parse as host-less (skipping the host allowlist) but resolve to `evil.com` in the browser. Third, `UrlAttributeSanitizer` checks `'a' === $element` to route to the link policy and falls through to the media policy otherwise, but `<area>` is a navigable hyperlink equivalent to `<a>`; so `<area href>` was sanitised against the media policy (which typically allows `data:` and may have no host allowlist), bypassing `allowLinkHosts()` / `allowLinkSchemes()` entirely. ### Resolution `UrlSanitizer::sanitize()` now rejects URLs that contain a backslash or that use a special scheme (`http`, `https`, `ftp`, `ws`,


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