CVE-2021-44120
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedSPIP 4.0.0 is affected by a Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in ecrire/public/interfaces.php, adding the function safehtml to the vulnerable fields. An editor is able to modify his personal information. If the editor has an article written and available, when a user goes to the public site and wants to read the author's information, the malicious code will be executed. The "Who are you" and "Website Name" fields are vulnerable.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysisUntrusted input is placed into a web page without being neutralised, so an attacker's markup or script executes in another user's browser. That can hijack sessions, capture keystrokes, or silently perform actions as the victim. Fixing it properly means context-aware output encoding everywhere data meets HTML, backed by a content-security policy as a second line of defence.
General guidance for the cross-site scripting (xss) class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data= 4.0.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Changed
- Confidentiality
- Low
- Integrity
- Low
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
dbcve · scopedSPIP 4.0.1 or later
- 1. Identify the current SPIP version by checking the admin panel or version file
- 2. Download SPIP 4.0.1 or later from the official SPIP website (https://www.spip.net/)
- 3. Back up the entire SPIP installation directory and database before upgrading
- 4. Upload and extract the new SPIP version files, overwriting the existing installation
- 5. Run the upgrade process by accessing the site (SPIP will automatically detect and upgrade the database)
- 6. Verify the fix by checking that the safehtml function is applied to author profile fields in ecrire/public/interfaces.php
- 7. Test that the 'Who are you' and 'Website Name' fields properly sanitize HTML input
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-44120 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2021-44120 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data