plone.app.portlets vulnerable to denial of service via RSS feed portlet

CRITICAL 9.1CVE-2026-55248 · GHSA-x5g3-w747-2h8q · PYSEC-2026-3884 · Published 28/08/2026 · updated 09/09/2026

Package	Affected versions	Patched versions
plone-app-portlets PyPI	`≥ 6.0.0, < 6.0.4≥ 7.0.0, < 7.0.2< 5.0.8`	`6.0.47.0.25.0.8`

Description

Impact

By adding an RSS portlet, and giving this a link to a very large file, a member can cause a denial of service attack, because Plone will use lots of memory. The member could also use different urls to try to get information about the internal network and open port numbers (SSRF). A malicious RSS feed could cause stored XSS, when the url of a feed item is a javascript url.

Patches

The problem has been patched in plone.app.portlets.

For Plone 6.2: upgrade to plone.app.portlets 7.0.2
For Plone 6.1: upgrade to plone.app.portlets 6.0.4
For Plone 6.0: upgrade to plone.app.portlets 5.0.8

Workarounds

If upgrading is not immediately possible:

Restrict who can manage portlets: remove the plone.app.portlets.ManageOwnPortlets permission from untrusted roles, and limit Manage portlets to trusted administrators (usually this is already restricted to the Manager and Site Administrator roles).
Where the RSS portlet is not needed, unregister it so it cannot be added. This would need to be done by editing a portlets.xml in your own code, so it is not a quick fix.

References

This is similar to this plone.app.event vulnerability. It was discovered by the Plone Security Team by thinking of similar cases to the plone.app.event problem.

NVD description

plone.app.portlets provides portlets and a Plone-specific user interface for plone.portlets. Prior to 5.0.8, 6.0.4, and 7.0.2, a member who can add an RSS portlet can set its feed URL to a very large response, causing src/plone/app/portlets/portlets/rss.py to download and retain excessive data in memory and deny service. The same RSS URL handling accepts internal hosts, IP addresses, single-word domains, and explicit ports, allowing server-side requests that can probe internal network services and open ports. A malicious feed item can also supply a JavaScript URL that is retained as the item link and can execute script when used by a victim. The affected logic includes _rss_feed_url_validator, _normal_url_validator, RSSFeed._retrieveFeed, RSSFeed._buildItemDict, and the FEED_DATA in-memory cache. This issue is fixed in versions 5.0.8, 6.0.4, and 7.0.2.

References

plone/plone.app.portlets security advisory · WEB
plone/plone.app.portlets commit 09da52e · WEB
plone/plone.app.portlets commit 9f16b6f · WEB
plone/plone.app.portlets commit a3b2c28 · WEB
plone/plone.app.portlets commit df5e256 · WEB
plone/plone.app.portlets · PACKAGE
pypi.org/project/plone-app-portlets · PACKAGE
GitHub Advisory GHSA-x5g3-w747-2h8q · ADVISORY
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-55248 · ADVISORY

Running one of these products? Scan your site to see whether it exposes a vulnerable version.

Scan my site free

Package

Affected versions

Patched versions

plone-app-portlets

PyPI

≥ 6.0.0, < 6.0.4≥ 7.0.0, < 7.0.2< 5.0.8

6.0.47.0.25.0.8

Description

Impact

Patches

The problem has been patched in plone.app.portlets.

For Plone 6.2: upgrade to plone.app.portlets 7.0.2
For Plone 6.1: upgrade to plone.app.portlets 6.0.4
For Plone 6.0: upgrade to plone.app.portlets 5.0.8

Workarounds

If upgrading is not immediately possible:

Restrict who can manage portlets: remove the plone.app.portlets.ManageOwnPortlets permission from untrusted roles, and limit Manage portlets to trusted administrators (usually this is already restricted to the Manager and Site Administrator roles).
Where the RSS portlet is not needed, unregister it so it cannot be added. This would need to be done by editing a portlets.xml in your own code, so it is not a quick fix.

References

This is similar to this plone.app.event vulnerability. It was discovered by the Plone Security Team by thinking of similar cases to the plone.app.event problem.

NVD description