VulnerabilityPublished 12 Jun 2025

CVE-2025-49576: StarCitizenTools mediawiki-skins-Citizen · Cross-site Scripting

Affects StarCitizenTools mediawiki-skins-CitizenSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium : upgrade to 3.3.1 when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.5Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 36% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 3.3.1

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: High
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 12 Jun 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade starcitizentools/mediawiki-skins-Citizen to 3.3.1.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubstarcitizentools/mediawiki-skins-Citizen`pkg:github/starcitizentools/mediawiki-skins-Citizen`Other threats	Affected <3.3.1	Fixed in 3.3.1

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

Immediate upgrade to mediawiki-skins-Citizen version 3.3.1 or later, where the vulnerability is fixed.
Restrict and audit permissions for editing system messages, limiting this capability to a minimal number of trusted administrators.
Implement Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to restrict the execution of inline scripts and reduce the impact of potential XSS payloads.
Regularly review and sanitize all user-editable content, especially system messages and templates, to prevent injection of malicious code.
Monitor MediaWiki logs for unusual edits to system messages or other high-privilege content areas.
Educate administrators about the risks of XSS and the importance of cautious editing of system messages.
Consider deploying web application firewalls (WAF) with rules tuned to detect and block XSS attempts targeting MediaWiki instances.
Conduct periodic security assessments and penetration tests focusing on privileged user functions within MediaWiki environments.

Description

Citizen is a MediaWiki skin that makes extensions part of the cohesive experience. The citizen-search-noresults-title and citizen-search-noresults-desc system messages are inserted into raw HTML, allowing anybody who can edit those messages to insert arbitrary HTML into the DOM. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.3.1.

Impact

For European organizations using MediaWiki with the Citizen skin, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to internal knowledge bases, documentation portals, and collaborative platforms. Since exploitation requires high privileges to edit system messages, the threat is primarily insider or compromised privileged user scenarios. However, once exploited, the injected scripts can affect any user accessing the affected MediaWiki instance, potentially leading to credential theft, session hijacking, or unauthorized actions performed on behalf of legitimate users. This can result in data breaches, intellectual property theft, and disruption of internal communications. Organizations in sectors with high reliance on MediaWiki for documentation, such as technology firms, research institutions, and government agencies, could face reputational damage and compliance issues under GDPR if personal data is compromised. The vulnerability does not impact availability directly but undermines trust in the integrity and confidentiality of the platform. Given the medium severity and the requirement for privileged access, the risk is moderate but should not be underestimated in environments where MediaWiki is widely used for sensitive or critical information.

CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #1OWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages.
Architecture and Design · Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch (opens in a new tab)
DOM-Based XSS (opens in a new tab)
Reflected XSS (opens in a new tab)
Stored XSS (opens in a new tab)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 12 Jun 2025, 19:24 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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