What is CVE-2016-3971?

CVE-2016-3971 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Dotcms, classified under Cross-site Scripting. CVSS score: 4.8/10. Published 2016-04-18.

How severe is CVE-2016-3971?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.8 out of 10.

XSS in Dotcms

CVE-2016-3971

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in lucene_search.jsp in dotCMS before 3.5.1 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the query parameter to c/portal/layout.

Vulnerability class: XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)

Published 2016-04-18 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 4.8 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.007 (49.6th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 50th percentile — 49.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.007 · newest: 0.007 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Dotcms

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-79 — Cross-site Scripting

References

dotcms.com/security/SI-33 (Vendor Advisory)
seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Apr/37 (mailing-list, Exploit)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2016-3971?: CVE-2016-3971 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Dotcms, classified under Cross-site Scripting. CVSS score: 4.8/10. Published 2016-04-18.
How severe is CVE-2016-3971?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.8 out of 10.