CVE-2026-61448: Parse Server vulnerable to stored XSS via malformed Content-Type bypassing file upload extension blocklist

Parse Server’s file upload validation uses the fileUpload.fileExtensions option (enabled by default with a blocklist) to reject files that browsers may render as active content, mitigating stored cross-site scripting (XSS). When an uploaded file’s extension is not recognized by the mime package, Parse Server preserves the client-supplied Content-Type and passes it to the storage adapter. A malformed Content-Type that is not a valid type/subtype media type — for example image (no subtype), image/ (empty subtype), or image//svg+xml (invalid token) — bypassed the blocklist and was stored unchanged. On storage adapters that persist and serve the uploaded Content-Type (such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Azure Blob Storage), a browser cannot parse the malformed Content-Type and falls back to MIME-sniffing the file content; a file whose body begins with HTML markup is then rendered as HTML, executing any embedded script in the application’s origin. This allows a user permitted to upload files to store content that executes as script against other users who open the file URL. The default GridFS storage adapter is not affected, as it recomputes the Content-Type from the filename and serves files with X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff.