Vulnerability Database

359,126

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2026-52881 — mantisbt / mantisbt

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

MantisBT 2.28.3 and earlier contains six reflected XSS injection points in /admin/install.php. User-supplied parameters are echoed into HTML without escaping via an unescaped printf format string. No authentication is required.

A Content Security Policy (script-src 'self') prevents inline JavaScript execution, but the CSP is missing a form-action directive, allowing exploitation via credential-phishing form injection and <meta> open redirects.

Impact

  • Credential phishing: Attacker crafts a URL that renders a fake login form on the real MantisBT admin page. Admin credentials are submitted to an attacker-controlled server.
  • Open redirect: Victim is silently redirected to a phishing or malware site.
  • UI manipulation: CSS injection can hide legitimate page content and overlay attacker-controlled HTML, enabling social engineering.

Patches

  • https://github.com/mantisbt/mantisbt/commit/297773fbb238c39a153bd888431b41a176132098

Workarounds

Remove the /admin directory, as recommended in the Admin Guide

Resources

Credits

McCaulay Hudson (@_McCaulay) of watchTowr

No technical information available.

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.