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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS / 18.04 LTS / 20.04 LTS : Bleach vulnerabilities (USN-8077-1)

critical Nessus Plugin ID 301534

Synopsis

The remote Ubuntu host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The remote Ubuntu 16.04 LTS / 18.04 LTS / 20.04 LTS host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the USN-8077-1 advisory.

 It was discovered that Bleach did not properly sanitize URI attributes containing character entities. An attacker could possibly use this issue to construct a URI with a disallowed scheme that would bypass sanitization, leading to cross-site scripting. This issue only affected Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2018-7753)

 Yaniv Nizry discovered that Bleach was vulnerable to a mutation cross-site scripting issue when sanitizing HTML with the noscript tag and a raw tag in the allowed tags list. An attacker could possibly use this issue to inject malicious content, leading to cross-site scripting. This issue only affected Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2020-6802)

 Yaniv Nizry discovered that Bleach was vulnerable to a mutation cross-site scripting issue when sanitizing HTML with RCDATA together with svg or math tags in the allowed tags list. An attacker could possibly use this issue to inject malicious content, leading to cross-site scripting. (CVE-2020-6816)

 It was discovered that Bleach incorrectly handled parsing of style attributes when sanitizing HTML. An attacker could possibly use this issue to perform a regular expression denial of service, leading to excessive resource consumption. (CVE-2020-6817)

 Yaniv Nizry and Micha Bentkowski discovered that Bleach was vulnerable to a mutation cross-site scripting issue when sanitizing HTML with certain combinations of allowed tags. An attacker could possibly use this issue to inject malicious content, leading to cross-site scripting. (CVE-2021-23980)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the affected python-bleach and / or python3-bleach packages.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8077-1

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 301534

File Name: ubuntu_USN-8077-1.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 3/9/2026

Updated: 3/9/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 5.9

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-7753

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 8.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.3

Threat Score: 8.9

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:P

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:python-bleach, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:python3-bleach

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/Debian/dpkg-l, Host/Ubuntu, Host/Ubuntu/release

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 3/5/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 3/6/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-7753, CVE-2020-6802, CVE-2020-6816, CVE-2020-6817, CVE-2021-23980

USN: 8077-1