CVE-2026-97318 in Giveaways and Contests by RafflePress Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 10/02/2026
The Giveaways and Contests by RafflePress WordPress plugin before 1.12.27 does not properly validate a giveaway's parent page URL before saving it and later redirecting visitors to it, allowing unauthenticated attackers to make the site's own giveaway confirmation and referral links redirect visitors to an arbitrary external site.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/02/2026
The vulnerability identified in Giveaways and Contests by RafflePress versions prior to 1.12.27 represents a critical failure in input validation within the plugin’s handling of parent page URLs for giveaways. This flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to inject malicious redirect targets into the application logic without requiring any form of authentication or privilege escalation. The core technical issue stems from the lack of proper sanitization and verification mechanisms when saving user-supplied data, specifically the URL designated as the parent page for a giveaway entry. By exploiting this weakness, an attacker can manipulate the internal state of the plugin to store arbitrary external URLs that appear legitimate within the context of the WordPress site’s configuration but ultimately serve malicious purposes upon execution.
From a technical perspective, the vulnerability operates through a classic open redirect mechanism facilitated by insufficient validation at the point of data persistence and subsequent redirection logic. When an administrator or user with sufficient privileges creates or modifies a giveaway, they are prompted to specify a parent page URL which typically serves as the landing destination for participants after completing certain actions such as referrals or confirmations. The application fails to validate whether this provided URL belongs to the same domain or is otherwise safe before storing it in the database. Consequently, when the system later processes these stored values and redirects visitors based on them, it blindly trusts the attacker-controlled input. This behavior enables the redirection of traffic away from the intended legitimate destination to a phishing site, malware distribution server, or other malicious infrastructure controlled by the adversary.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is significant due to its potential for social engineering attacks and reputation damage. Since the redirect originates from a trusted domain associated with the vulnerable WordPress installation, victims are more likely to trust the link initially. Attackers can leverage this trust to conduct phishing campaigns that mimic legitimate services or capture sensitive credentials under false pretenses. Furthermore, search engines may penalize sites hosting such redirects if they detect malicious outbound links, leading to SEO degradation and loss of organic traffic. The ability for unauthenticated actors to influence these redirects means that even users with minimal access levels could potentially be coerced into performing actions that result in the injection of malicious URLs, thereby expanding the attack surface beyond just direct administrative exploitation.
This vulnerability aligns closely with CWE-601, which describes URL Redirection to Untrusted Site (Open Redirect), a common weakness found in web applications where input is not properly validated before being used as part of an HTTP redirect response. Additionally, from a tactical standpoint related to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, this flaw facilitates techniques associated with Initial Access and Credential Harvesting via phishing. The attacker’s ability to manipulate redirects allows them to bypass basic security warnings that browsers might otherwise display for obviously malicious domains, thereby increasing the success rate of social engineering efforts. It also supports lateral movement in scenarios where multiple sites share similar configurations or user bases, as compromised trust can be propagated across ecosystems relying on the same plugin infrastructure.
Mitigation strategies must focus primarily on immediate patching and long-term defensive coding practices. Administrators should upgrade to version 1.12.27 or later of the Giveaways and Contests by RafflePress plugin immediately upon availability, as this release addresses the validation deficiencies responsible for the flaw. In environments where upgrading is not instantly feasible, temporary mitigations include restricting access to giveaway management interfaces through IP whitelisting if possible, although this may be impractical in many public-facing deployments. Developers implementing similar functionality should enforce strict allow-listing of permitted domains or implement rigorous URL parsing and validation routines that verify the scheme, host, and path components against expected patterns before storage. Implementing Content Security Policy headers can also help mitigate some downstream effects by restricting where frames and redirects are allowed to load content from, adding an additional layer of defense-in-depth against open redirect abuses.