What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-29484: DOM XSS in Theme Preview

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.3 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 7.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2021-04-29 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-79

Description

Ghost is a Node.js CMS. An unused endpoint added during the development of 4.0.0 has left sites vulnerable to untrusted users gaining access to Ghost Admin. Attackers can gain access by getting logged in users to click a link containing malicious code. Users do not need to enter credentials and may not know they've visited a malicious site. Ghost(Pro) has already been patched. We can find no evidence that the issue was exploited on Ghost(Pro) prior to the patch being added. Self-hosters are impacted if running Ghost a version between 4.0.0 and 4.3.2. Immediate action should be taken to secure your site. The issue has been fixed in 4.3.3, all 4.x sites should upgrade as soon as possible. As the endpoint is unused, the patch simply removes it. As a workaround blocking access to /ghost/preview can also mitigate the issue.

Affected products

• TryGhost Ghost: from 4.0.0 before 4.3.3 — fixed in 4.3.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: TryGhost Ghost 4.3.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://blog.sonarsource.com/ghost-admin-takeover
• https://forum.ghost.org/t/critical-security-update-available-for-ghost-4-x/22290
• https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/security/advisories/GHSA-9fgx-q25h-jxrg
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/ghost
• https://blog.sonarsource.com/ghost-admin-takeover
• https://forum.ghost.org/t/critical-security-update-available-for-ghost-4-x/22290
• https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/security/advisories/GHSA-9fgx-q25h-jxrg
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/ghost

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