XSS in Obsidian Plugins: Safer Patterns and Tradeoffs
Obsidian plugin development feels deceptively safe. You are not building a public website. You are writing code for a note-taking app, usually for power users, often for yourself first. That mindset is exactly why XSS bugs slip in. The UI still renders HTML. The app still runs JavaScript. The plugin still touches untrusted content from notes, frontmatter, sync sources, APIs, and other plugins. And because Obsidian sits on Electron, a bad XSS bug can feel worse than the browser kind. Sometimes it is “just” UI injection. Sometimes it is account token theft from a plugin settings panel. Sometimes it becomes local file access or remote code execution territory if the plugin mixes unsafe rendering with privileged APIs. ...