Mermaid does not properly sanitize architecture diagram iconText leading to XSS

mermaid Updated 14 Dec 2025

Summary

19/08/2025
Yes i
Moderate
5.1

CVE-2025-54880: Mermaid does not properly sanitize architecture diagram iconText leading to XSS. Affects mermaid versions >= 11.1.0, < 11.10.0. Fixed in 11.10.0. How to fix ↓

Also tracked for

The same CVE-2025-54880 is tracked separately for each ecosystem and vendor. Its fix information is the same; the package and affected versions differ.

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Summary

In the default configuration of mermaid 11.9.0, user supplied input for architecture diagram icons is passed to the d3 html() method, creating a sink for cross site scripting.

Details

Architecture diagram service iconText values are passed to the d3 html() method, allowing malicious users to inject arbitrary HTML and cause XSS when mermaid-js is used in it's default configuration.

The vulnerability lies here:

export const drawServices = async function (
  db: ArchitectureDB,
  elem: D3Element,
  services: ArchitectureService[]
): Promise<number> {
  for (const service of services) {
    /** ... **/
    } else if (service.iconText) {
      bkgElem.html(
        `<g>${await getIconSVG('blank', { height: iconSize, width: iconSize, fallbackPrefix: architectureIcons.prefix })}</g>`
      );
      const textElemContainer = bkgElem.append('g');
      const fo = textElemContainer
        .append('foreignObject')
        .attr('width', iconSize)
        .attr('height', iconSize);
      const divElem = fo
        .append('div')
        .attr('class', 'node-icon-text')
        .attr('style', `height: ${iconSize}px;`)
        .append('div')
        .html(service.iconText); // <- iconText passed into innerHTML
       /** ... **/
};
};

This issue was introduced with 734bde38777c9190a5a72e96421c83424442d4e4, around 15 months ago, which was released in v11.1.0.

PoC

Render the following diagram and observe the modified DOM.

architecture-beta
    group api(cloud)[API]
    service db "<img src=x onerror=\"document.write(`xss on ${document.domain}`)\">" [Database] in api

Here is a PoC on mermaid.live: https://mermaid.live/edit#pako:eNo9T8FOwzAM_ZXI4rBJpWrpRtuIISF24caZZdKyxOsiLUnlJjCo-u9kQ8wX-_n5-dkjKK8ROEhSRxNQhUh4v8cghWMpOvKxZ7I3M3XyUc83L-9v2z9qQPo0CpneMwFPxnZsILU6M--QyNNKCAHaq2jRhfyL0vLZ7jwMiWd3443Q3krjpt38Mv4sgG3WMsi9HHDLjLs4CwcZdGQ08EARM7BISZMgjJdLBIQjWhTAU6nxIOMpCBBuSrJeug_v7b8yPdMdgR_kaUgo9loGXBvZkbS3LqHTSK8-ugC8LMrrEuAjnIEvlnlVL9q6rZu6Lh-rRQbfwKuyyZuybcvqIaWiqKcMfq6uRd7Uy-kXhYFzcA

Impact

XSS on all sites that use mermaid and render user supplied diagrams without further sanitization.

Remediation

Sanitize the value of iconText before passing it to html().

How To Fix

Latest published version: 12.2.0 as of 22 Oct 2026

npm install mermaid@12.2.0

Upgrading to it may include breaking changes; the version below is the minimum fixed release for this vulnerability.

If you need the minimum change

11.10.0

This is the first release that contains the fix.

npm install mermaid@11.10.0

Tip — Not sure which version your app runs? Vulert can match this fix to it. Scan free →

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How To Fix

Latest published version: 12.2.0 as of 22 Oct 2026

npm install mermaid@12.2.0

Upgrading to it may include breaking changes; the version below is the minimum fixed release for this vulnerability.

If you need the minimum change

11.10.0

This is the first release that contains the fix.

npm install mermaid@11.10.0

Tip — Not sure which version your app runs? Vulert can match this fix to it. Scan free →

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