CVE-2026-26953: pi-hole web Improper Input Validation

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-26953 is a medium (CVSS 5.4) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in pi-hole web. EPSS estimates a 0.49% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 40.7% of scored vulnerabilities. 1 public exploit is recorded.

Timeline

1. 19-02-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 20-02-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Pi-hole Admin Interface is a web interface for managing Pi-hole, a network-level ad and internet tracker blocking application. Versions 6.0 and above have a Stored HTML Injection vulnerability in the active sessions table located on the API settings page, allowing an attacker with valid credentials to inject arbitrary HTML code that will be rendered in the browser of any administrator who visits the active sessions page. The rowCallback function contains the value data.x_forwarded_for, which is directly concatenated into an HTML string and inserted into the DOM using jQuery’s .html() method. This method interprets the content as HTML, which means that any HTML tags present in the value will be parsed and rendered by the browser. An attacker can use common tools such as curl, wget, Python requests, Burp Suite, or even JavaScript fetch() to send an authentication request with an X-Forwarded-For header that contains malicious HTML code instead of a legitimate IP address. Since Pi-hole implements a Content Security Policy (CSP) that blocks inline JavaScript, the impact is limited to pure HTML injection without the ability to execute scripts. This issue has been fixed in version 6.4.1.

• CWE-20Improper Input ValidationThe product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly.
• CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')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.
• CWE-116Improper Encoding or Escaping of OutputThe product prepares a structured message for communication with another component, but encoding or escaping of the data is either missing or done incorrectly. As a result, the intended structure of the message is not preserved.