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CVE PROGRAM SOURCE RECORD8.1 High

CVE-2026-16231

hbs vulnerable to XSS via registerAsyncHelper output-escaping bypass

Description

hbs is an Express view engine that wraps Handlebars. Its registerAsyncHelper API bypasses Handlebars' automatic HTML escaping: an async helper returns an opaque placeholder during the first render pass, so the double-brace expression escapes only the placeholder, and after rendering hbs substitutes the placeholder with the raw callback return value without escaping it, across the cached, uncached, and layout render paths. An application that passes attacker-influenced data, for example user-supplied content from a database, into an async helper callback can therefore have arbitrary HTML and JavaScript injected into the server-rendered page, resulting in stored or reflected cross-site scripting. Versions 2.1.0 through 4.2.1 are affected, and the issue is fixed in 4.3.0, which HTML-escapes async helper output. Applications that intentionally emit raw HTML from an async helper can opt in explicitly with hbs.SafeString. Users should upgrade to 4.3.0.

Affected products

Version statuses are supplied by the assigning organization. Consult the original record for detailed ranges and platform conditions.

hbs hbs

Default version status: unaffected

  • 2.1.0 to < 4.3.0affected
  • 4.3.0unaffected
pkg:npm/hbs

References