Cross-site Scripting (XSS)Weakness · CWE-79

CVE-2026-39960

MEDIUM · 5.4 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-05-20
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
58/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable Patch available

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 · unedited
Mantis Bug Tracker (MantisBT) is an open source issue tracker. Versions 2.28.1 and below contain flawed logic that causes improper escaping of a textarea custom field's contents in the Update Issue page, (bug_update_page.php) allowing an attacker to inject HTML and, if CSP settings permit, execute arbitrary JavaScript when the page is loaded. This facilitates session theft, leading to admin account takeover, full project data access. In order to exploit this issue, a textarea-type custom field must be configured for the project, the attack must be carried out by an authenticated user with bug report permission (low privilege). This can affect any user viewing the bug edit form, including administrators. The issue has been fixed in version 2.28.2. If users cannot immediately upgrade, they can work around the issue by using the default Content-Security Policy, which blocks script execution.

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 analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-79

Untrusted 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 →

CVSS 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 · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

MantisBT version 2.28.2

  1. 1. Back up your MantisBT database and installation directory before proceeding.
  2. 2. Download MantisBT version 2.28.2 from the official MantisBT repository (https://www.mantisbt.org/download.php).
  3. 3. Extract the new version to a temporary location.
  4. 4. Replace the existing MantisBT files with the files from version 2.28.2, preserving your configuration files (especially config/config_inc.php).
  5. 5. Verify the fix by logging into MantisBT and navigating to the bug update page with a textarea-type custom field configured.
  6. 6. Confirm that custom field content is now properly escaped and no XSS can be injected.

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-39960 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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