---
id: CVE-2026-73628
title: >-
  Serendipity versions >= 2.3.5 and <= 2.6.0 contain a reflected cross-site
  scripting vulnerability in the search clean-URL route (/search/<term>)
summary: >-
  Serendipity versions >= 2.3.5 and <= 2.6.0 contain a reflected cross-site
  scripting vulnerability in the search clean-URL route (/search/<term>). In
  include/functions_routing.inc.php serveSearch(), the sanitisation pipeline
  runs urldecod…
severity: medium
cvss: 6.1
cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N'
cwe:
  - CWE-79
published: '2026-08-13'
updated: '2026-09-09'
sourceUpdated: '2026-09-09T20:35:08.537'
source: NVD
sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-73628'
references:
  - url: 'https://github.com/s9y/Serendipity/security/advisories/GHSA-6c2x-mjmq-vx4q'
    label: disclosure@vulncheck.com
  - url: >-
      https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/serendipity-reflected-xss-via-search-clean-url-route
    label: disclosure@vulncheck.com
  - url: 'https://github.com/s9y/Serendipity/security/advisories/GHSA-6c2x-mjmq-vx4q'
    label: 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0
tags:
  - nvd
epss: 0.00189
epssPercentile: 0.08764
ingestedAt: '2026-09-09T21:22:45.533Z'
---

## Overview

Serendipity versions >= 2.3.5 and <= 2.6.0 contain a reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability in the search clean-URL route (/search/<term>). In include/functions_routing.inc.php serveSearch(), the sanitisation pipeline runs urldecode() after HTML-encoding, so a single URL-encoded HTML payload survives strip_tags() and htmlspecialchars() and is then decoded back into live HTML in the page. A crafted search link can execute arbitrary JavaScript in the victim's browser. Fixed in 2.6.1.

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.