CVE-2026-126078: Action View: Possible XSS vulnerability in Action View highlight helper

Action View is a framework for handling view template lookup and rendering and provides view helpers for building HTML. Prior to 8.1.4.1 and 8.0.5.2, ActionView::Helpers::TextHelper#highlight substitutes each matched phrase into the :highlighter string without escaping it and returns the result marked HTML-safe. Because sanitizing leaves quote characters in text unescaped, a match substituted into a quoted attribute value of the highlighter, such as the <a href="search?q=\1"> form shown in the method's documentation, could end the attribute value and add attributes to the element, possibly leading to XSS. Applications are affected when they pass a :highlighter that places a placeholder inside an attribute value and highlight text or phrases that a user controls. The default <mark>\1</mark> highlighter and the block form are not affected. This issue is fixed in versions 8.1.4.1 and 8.0.5.2.