CVE-2026-39971 PUBLISHED

Serendipity: Host Header Injection leads to SMTP header injection via unvalidated HTTP_HOST

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 08.04.2026 Published: 14.04.2026 Updated: 14.04.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
CVSS Score: 7.2

Product Status

Vendor s9y
Product Serendipity
Versions
  • Version < 2.6.0 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-113: Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences in HTTP Headers ('HTTP Request/Response Splitting') CWE