Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk <= 6.86 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment Content aria-label Placeholder
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 6.87
- Affected Plugin
- Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk
- Affected Version
<= 6.86- CVSS
- 7.2High
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2026-77830
At a glance
CVE-2026-77830 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 6.86. It carries a CVSS score of 7.2 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 6.87; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2026, reported by theviper17y.
Vulnerability Overview
The Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment Content aria-label Placeholder in all versions up to, and including, 6.86 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with custom-level access and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. The payload is deliverable via unauthenticated comment submission and executes exclusively for non-logged-in visitors; if comment moderation is enabled, an approving moderator must first publish the comment before the script reaches other users.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed, and no privileges on the target site, and no interaction from a victim user.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk <= 6.86 takes no account at all. Cross-site scripting happens when input from a request is written into a page without being escaped for the context it lands in, so the browser parses attacker-supplied text as markup or script.
Injected script runs with the privileges of whoever views the affected page, which is how these flaws turn into administrator session theft, silent account creation or persistent backdoors in page content. For Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk the fix is 6.87: builds <= 6.86 are affected, anything from 6.87 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 6.87, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk 6.87 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in Spam protection, Honeypot, Anti-Spam by CleanTalk
- 9.8CVE-2026-1490: Spam protection Authorization Bypass
CVE-2026-1490 - 9.8CVE-2024-10542: Spam protection Authorization Bypass
CVE-2024-10542 - 8.1CVE-2024-10781: Spam protection Authorization Bypass
CVE-2024-10781 - 7.5CVE-2021-24295: Spam protection Blind SQL Injection
CVE-2021-24295 - 7.2CVE-2022-3302: AntiSpam by CleanTalk <= 5.185 SQL Injection
CVE-2022-3302 - 7.2CVE-2021-24131: Anti-Spam by CleanTalk < 5.149 SQL Injection
CVE-2021-24131 - 6.3CVE-2023-33996: Spam protection Missing Authorization
CVE-2023-33996 - 6.1CVE-2019-17515: Spam protection Reflected XSS
CVE-2019-17515
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