Summary
decidim-elections: Election question titles allow stored script execution
Description
A low-privilege process-scoped admin who can manage elections can store arbitrary HTML in the question statement/body without sanitization, and the public elections UI renders that value unsafely.
Technical description
This stored XSS appears because election question titles are rendered as trusted HTML instead of sanitized text. The election question editor stores question.body as a normal translatable string, and the public helper question_title returns that value with html_safe and no sanitization boundary, so any user who can edit election questions can persist markup or script-bearing payloads that later render on public election pages.
Workarounds
Developers should review their implementation's administrator accesses and not give access to untrustworthy users
Resources
OWASP XSS Injection
Credits
This issue was discovered in a security audit organized by the Decidim Association and made by Radically Open Security against Decidim financed by NGI.
Impact
A low-privilege process-scoped admin or other election editor with question-management rights can persist JavaScript that executes in visitor's browsers on public election pages and voting booth screens.
Untrusted input is rendered as active markup in a victim's browser, which can run script in their session. Typical impact: session or credential theft, and actions taken as the user.
CVE-2026-44282 has a CVSS score of 4.8 (Medium). The vector is network-reachable, high privileges required, and user interaction required. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (0.32.0); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2026-44282? CVE-2026-44282 is a medium-severity cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in decidim-elections (rubygems), affecting versions < 0.32.0. It is fixed in 0.32.0. Untrusted input is rendered as active markup in a victim's browser, which can run script in their session.
- How severe is CVE-2026-44282? CVE-2026-44282 has a CVSS score of 4.8 (Medium). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
- Which versions of decidim-elections are affected by CVE-2026-44282? decidim-elections (rubygems) versions < 0.32.0 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-44282? Yes. CVE-2026-44282 is fixed in 0.32.0. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2026-44282 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2026-44282 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2026-44282 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2026-44282? Upgrade
decidim-electionsto 0.32.0 or later.