Description
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.
Metrics
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:LWeakness enumeration
Affected software
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| discourse | discourse-footnote | < 0.2 |
References
- https://github.com/discourse/discourse-footnote/commit/796617e0131277011207541313522cd1946661abPatch, Third Party Advisory
- https://github.com/discourse/discourse-footnote/security/advisories/GHSA-58vr-c56v-qr57Third Party Advisory
- https://github.com/discourse/discourse-footnote/commit/796617e0131277011207541313522cd1946661abPatch, Third Party Advisory
- https://github.com/discourse/discourse-footnote/security/advisories/GHSA-58vr-c56v-qr57Third Party Advisory
Timeline
- Published
- Dec 14, 2021
- Last modified
- Jun 17, 2026
- NVD status
- Modified