CVE-2026-6177

Custom Twitter Feeds <= 2.5.4 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Cached Tweet Text

2026-05-12 00:00
gidget smith

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.5.5
Affected Plugin
Custom Twitter Feeds – A Tweets Widget or X Feed Widget
Affected Version
<= 2.5.4
CVSS
7.2High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2026-6177
View all Custom Twitter Feeds – A Tweets Widget or X Feed Widget vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2026-6177 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Custom Twitter Feeds WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.5.4. 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 2.5.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2026, reported by gidget smith.

Vulnerability Overview

The Custom Twitter Feeds plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting in versions up to and including 2.5.4. This is due to insufficient output escaping in the CTF_Display_Elements::get_post_text() function when rendering cached tweet text. The plugin's ctf_get_more_posts AJAX action is available to unauthenticated users and directly outputs cached tweet data through nl2br() without HTML escaping. When an attacker can get malicious content into cached tweet data (either by tweeting content that gets cached by the site's feed configuration, or through other vulnerabilities), the malicious HTML/JavaScript is executed when the unauthenticated endpoint is accessed. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses the affected endpoint.

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')

Custom Twitter Feeds <= 2.5.4 carries this weakness at get_post_text(), and reaching it 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 Custom Twitter Feeds the fix is 2.5.5: builds <= 2.5.4 are affected, anything from 2.5.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.5.5, 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: Custom Twitter Feeds 2.5.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-6177https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/e4b2178f-e4da-4bfb-9c27-8c1884499769https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-6177

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C