Patchstack detailed a high-severity cross-site request forgery flaw, rated 8.8 and not yet assigned a CVE, in the Elementor Website Builder WordPress plugin, which is active on over ten million sites. It affects only versions 4.3.0 and 4.3.1, installed on more than two million sites, and is fixed in 4.3.2. One link opened by a logged-in WordPress user makes that user perform any REST API action their account permits, so an administrator clicking it creates a second administrator account for the attacker on a stock install. The attack needs no JavaScript, submitted form, or attacker-controlled page; the link can be a plain anchor tag in an email, chat, or comment.
Threat actors began exploiting a critical WordPress flaw, CVE-2026-87902, rated 9.2, within hours of its public disclosure. The bug lets an unauthenticated attacker make get_page_template() include a chosen readable local .php file outside the active theme directories, which can lead to remote code execution when server and theme preconditions are met. Exploitation requires the active child or parent theme to contain a top-level directory whose name starts with page-, and a readable local .php target such as pearcmd.php. Previdian reported honeypot exploitation attempts from a New Jersey IP that include /usr/local/lib/php/pearcmd.php, write a file to /tmp, then pull a PHP upload script from GitHub to plant a web shell.
WordPress shipped 7.1.1 on September 17 to fix a flaw that pwn.ai calls Click2Shell, where a crafted link opened by a logged-in administrator installs a theme from the official directory with no click. Two parts of WordPress read the link differently, so attacker-added characters steer the admin browser into clicking Install, and the logged-in session supplies the permission and security token. Alone it only installs a real, switched-off theme, but the researchers chained it with a second flaw in the Mobile Repair Zone theme, whose handler fetched and ran remote code during a Customizer preview, reaching server code execution. No in-the-wild abuse is reported.
A flaw in All-in-One WP Migration and Backup, a WordPress plugin installed on millions of sites, can let an unauthenticated attacker take over a site. Tracked as CVE-2026-19949, it is a second-order SQL injection caused by incorrect handling of escaped characters when the plugin rewrites database content during a restore. An attacker plants crafted data through WordPress trackbacks, which triggers when an administrator exports and imports the site, both routine plugin operations. The injection can leak the plugin's secret import key through a public comment, letting the attacker import a malicious backup archive containing executable code and seize full control. ServMask fixed it in version 7.110, but many sites remain unpatched.
Researchers at Wordfence and Patchstack disclosed a cluster of critical WordPress vulnerabilities, most scored 9.8, that let unauthenticated attackers take over sites or run code. In the WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin, CVE-2026-76581 is a single-sign-on authentication bypass that can hand an attacker an administrator session. The Avada theme's CVE-2026-18431 allows arbitrary file writes that lead to remote code execution. In the Pods plugin, CVE-2026-19598 lets an attacker escalate to administrator or overwrite any user's password, while TranslatePress's CVE-2026-19632 exposes the raw administrator password-reset link. Each independently enables full site compromise, and a separate GiveWP flaw in the same batch was covered earlier.
A critical flaw in GiveWP, a WordPress donation and fundraising plugin installed on more than 100,000 sites, lets an unauthenticated attacker run commands on the hosting server. Tracked as CVE-2026-82222, it chains three weaknesses: an unsafe PHP deserialization helper, a donation flow that stores attacker-controlled serialized objects, and a gadget chain in bundled libraries that turns that into system command execution. Although exploitation normally needs an account, an exposed registration action lets an attacker create one even when registration is disabled, making it effectively unauthenticated. It affects versions up to 4.16.7.1 and is fixed in 4.16.7.2, which blocks serialized data during donation processing.
Attackers are exploiting two critical authentication-bypass flaws in the miniOrange SAML 2.0 Single Sign On plugin for WordPress, chaining them to forge login responses and sign in as an administrator. The first flaw, CVE-2026-61979, lets the plugin accept an attacker-chosen signature algorithm, so the identity provider's public key can be abused as a shared secret to forge a valid signature; the second, CVE-2026-15981, makes the plugin treat a signature-verification error as success. Both were fixed in July, but the vendor only alerted free-edition users, leaving paid editions unpatched. Security firm Patchstack traced an attack in mid-August where the two were chained to steal an administrator session cookie.
Researchers disclosed a critical flaw in Elementor Pro, the widely used WordPress page builder, that lets an unauthenticated visitor upload a PHP file through a public form and run code on the server. Tracked as CVE-2026-32475 and scored 9.0, it is a desynchronization bug in the Forms module's file-upload field: the code that validates an upload and the code that saves it disagree about how to handle an empty file entry. By sending a crafted upload with an empty first part followed by a PHP payload, an attacker slips the file past validation into a public directory. It affects versions up to 4.2.1 and is fixed in 4.2.2.
A critical flaw in Forminator Forms, a WordPress plugin with more than 600,000 installations, lets unauthenticated attackers upload executable PHP files and take over a site. Tracked as CVE-2026-15748 and scored 9.8, the bug chains weaknesses in the plugin's upload handling: an attacker smuggles a forged record through a Select field that declares itself a file upload, then slips a PHP file past a blocklist that only checks exact extensions. Exploitation requires a form with both a file upload field and a select field, and it affects all versions up to 1.56.1. Because it needs no authentication, automated scanners can hunt for vulnerable sites at scale.
Researchers at Wordfence found that attackers compromised the upstream infrastructure of BdThemes, a popular WordPress plugin vendor, and poisoned a remote JSON feed that its plugins fetch to show promotional banners in the admin dashboard. Because the malicious code lives in that feed rather than in the plugin source, no plugin update was needed and nothing changed on disk. The injected script runs in every logged-in administrator's browser, creates hidden rogue admin accounts through the site's own interface, and installs a fake plugin containing a web shell for persistence. Seven plugins including Element Pack and Prime Slider were affected, and the flaw sat unnoticed for about five months.
TrustStrike Labs