CVE-2021-43827
MEDIUMDiscourse Footnote < 0.2 - Improper Handling of Nested Tags
Title source: llmDescription
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.
References (2)
Core 2
Core References
Third Party Advisory x_refsource_confirm
https://github.com/discourse/discourse-footnote/security/advisories/GHSA-58vr-c56v-qr57
Patch, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://github.com/discourse/discourse-footnote/commit/796617e0131277011207541313522cd1946661ab
Scores
CVSS v3
4.3
EPSS
0.0028
EPSS Percentile
51.5%
Attack Vector
NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Details
CWE
CWE-755
Status
published
Products (1)
discourse/discourse_footnote
< 0.2
Published
Dec 14, 2021
Tracked Since
Feb 18, 2026