CVE-2021-43827 MEDIUM

CVE-2021-43827: Inline footnotes wrapped in <a> tags can cause errors in discourse-footnotes

Vendor Discourse
Product discourse-footnote
Weakness CWE-755
Published December 14, 2021
Last update August 4, 2024

CVSS base score

4.3/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality None
Integrity None

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

What the vulnerability does

01Description

discourse-footnote is a library providing footnotes for posts in Discourse. ### Impact When posting an inline footnote wrapped in `<a>` tags (e.g. `<a>^[footnote]</a>`, the resulting rendered HTML would include a nested `<a>`, which is stripped by Nokogiri because it is not valid. This then caused a javascript error on topic pages because we were looking for an `<a>` element inside the footnote reference span and getting its ID, and because it did not exist we got a null reference error in javascript. Users are advised to update to version 0.2. As a workaround editing offending posts from the rails console or the database console for self-hosters, or disabling the plugin in the admin panel can mitigate this issue.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

December 14, 2021 CVE published
August 4, 2024 Record updated