CVE-2026-101162 in Ultimate Review Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 10/03/2026
The WP Ultimate Review WordPress plugin before 2.4.4 does not escape some of its review overview settings before outputting them in posts, which could allow users with a role as low as author to perform Stored Cross-Site Scripting attacks, when author reviews are enabled.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/03/2026
The vulnerability identified in WP Ultimate Review versions prior to 2.4.4 represents a critical security flaw rooted in insufficient input validation and output encoding mechanisms within the plugin's review overview settings functionality. This specific weakness allows for Stored Cross-Site Scripting, commonly referred to as XSS, which is classified under CWE-79 in the Common Weakness Enumeration standard. The core technical issue arises because user-supplied data from the review configuration interface is rendered directly into HTML content without proper sanitization or escaping. When an administrator configures how reviews are displayed on a website, specific settings can be manipulated to inject malicious script payloads that persist within the database and execute whenever those pages are viewed by visitors.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is significantly amplified by the plugin's permission model, which permits users with low-privilege roles such as authors to modify these review overview settings when author reviews are enabled. This means that a compromised or maliciously registered user account does not need administrative privileges to exploit the flaw. By injecting JavaScript code into the review configuration fields, an attacker can achieve persistent execution of arbitrary scripts on behalf of any visitor who views the affected pages. The consequences of such exploitation include session hijacking through cookie theft, credential harvesting via phishing forms injected into legitimate page content, defacement of the website's appearance, and potentially redirecting users to malicious external sites designed for further malware distribution or social engineering attacks.
From a tactical perspective, this vulnerability aligns with techniques observed in the MITRE ATT&CK framework, specifically relating to client-side code injection and persistence mechanisms within web applications. The stored nature of the attack ensures that the payload remains active until manually removed from the database, creating a long-term threat vector even after the initial exploitation attempt has concluded. This persistent state makes remediation more complex than temporary session-based attacks, as it requires not only patching the code but also auditing existing data for injected scripts to prevent ongoing compromise of end-users interacting with the site.
Mitigation strategies must focus on both immediate technical fixes and broader security hygiene practices. The primary defense is upgrading the WP Ultimate Review plugin to version 2.4.4 or later, where developers have implemented proper output escaping functions such as esc_html or wp_kses_post in PHP code before rendering user data into HTML contexts. In addition to updating software, administrators should enforce strict role-based access control principles by limiting who can modify review settings, ideally restricting this capability solely to users with administrator privileges rather than authors. Implementing a Web Application Firewall can also provide an additional layer of defense by filtering out malicious payloads in HTTP requests before they reach the application logic. Regular security audits and code reviews are essential to ensure that future updates maintain rigorous standards for input validation and output encoding, thereby preventing similar vulnerabilities from being introduced into the system architecture.