CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2026-44175 — Kirby is an open-source content management system

High CVSS 8.5

Kirby is an open-source content management system. In versions prior to 4.9.1 and 5.4.1, Kirby did not securely sanitize the contents of the list field on save, leaving it vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS). Kirby's list field stores its formatted content as HTML, and unlike other field types, its HTML special characters cannot be escaped without losing the formatting. Sanitization was only enforced client-side in the Panel, while the server did not sanitize the content on save. As a result, an attacker could bypass the Panel and send malicious HTML directly to Kirby's API, storing unsanitized markup in the content file. That markup would then be rendered on the site frontend and executed in the browsers of site visitors and logged-in users browsing the site, resulting in persistent XSS. This issue has been fixed in versions 4.9.1 and 5.4.1.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.5 (4.0)
Published
2026-07-16
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-79

Affected products

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Matched remediation archetype

Cross-site scripting and unsafe browser output

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Check exposure

  • Trace reflected, stored, and DOM-derived untrusted values into HTML, attributes, URLs, styles, scripts, and client-side template sinks.
  • Identify affected origins, authenticated user roles, sensitive browser capabilities, and where content is shared across tenants.
  • Review framework escaping, rich-text sanitization, legacy templates, and client-side rendering paths.

Remediate safely

  • Use context-aware framework output encoding and safe DOM APIs; keep untrusted data out of executable contexts.
  • Sanitize intentionally supported markup with a maintained allowlist policy and validate URLs and attributes separately.
  • Update affected rendering components and add tests for every output context using inert sentinel markup.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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