CVE-2026-39971 HIGH

CVE-2026-39971: Serendipity: Host Header Injection leads to SMTP header injection via unvalidated HTTP_HOST

Vendor S9Y
Product Serendipity
Weakness CWE-113 · HTTP response splitting
Published April 14, 2026
Last update April 15, 2026

CVSS base score

7.2/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality Low
Integrity Low

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Serendipity is a PHP-powered weblog engine. In versions 2.6-beta2 and below, the email sending functionality in include/functions.inc.php inserts $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] directly into the Message-ID SMTP header without validation, and the existing sanitization function serendipity_isResponseClean() is not called on HTTP_HOST before embedding it. An attacker who can control the Host header during an email-triggering action such as comment notifications or subscription emails can inject arbitrary SMTP headers into outgoing emails. This enables identity spoofing, reply hijacking via manipulated Message-ID threading, and email reputation abuse through the attacker's domain being embedded in legitimate mail headers. This issue has been fixed in version 2.6.0.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

April 14, 2026 CVE published
April 15, 2026 Record updated