CVE-2026-41159

Impact

Mermaid's default configuration allows injecting CSS that applies outside of the Mermaid diagram via the fontFamily, themeCSS, and altFontFamily configuration options.

Live demo: mermaid.live

Example code:

%%{init: {"fontFamily": "x;a{b} :not(&){background:green !important} c{d}"}}%%
flowchart LR
    A --> B

The injected CSS exploits stylis's & (scope reference) handling. :not(&) escapes the #mermaid-xxx automatic scoping, applying styles to all page elements. Global at-rules (@font-face, @keyframes, @counter-style) are also injectable as stylis hoists them to top level.

This allows page defacement and DOM attribute exfiltration via CSS :has() selectors.

Patches

• v11.15.0 (see 64769738d5b59211e1decb471ffbaca8afec51aa)
• v10.9.6 (see a9d9f0d8eb790349121508688cd338253fd80d76)

Workarounds

If you can't upgrade mermaid, you can set the secure config value in the mermaid config to avoid allowing diagrams to modify fontFamily, themeCSS, altFontFamily, and themeVariables.

Setting "securityLevel": "sandbox" will also prevent this.

Credits

Reported by @zsxsoft on behalf of @KeenSecurityLab