CVE-2026-80437

Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You 3.14.10 - 3.15.1 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary Shortcode Execution

2026-09-04 00:00
Jakub Herman

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 3.15.2
Affected Plugin
Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You
Affected Version
3.14.10 – 3.15.1
CVSS
6.5Medium
Weakness type
CWE-94 · Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
CVE
CVE-2026-80437
View all Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2026-80437 is a medium-severity Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection') vulnerability in the Ninja Forms WordPress plugin, affecting versions 3.14.10 – 3.15.1. It carries a CVSS score of 6.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.15.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2026, reported by Jakub Herman.

Vulnerability Overview

The Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in versions 3.14.10 through 3.15.1. This is due to missing neutralization of shortcode brackets in the system_ip and referer_url merge tag sources in both MergeTags/Other.php and MergeTags/Deprecated.php before their values are processed by do_shortcode. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shortcodes registered on the site by supplying crafted bracket sequences in request-derived merge tag values such as the client IP address or referer URL.

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-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')

Reaching this weakness in Ninja Forms 3.14.10 – 3.15.1 takes no account at all. Code injection means input from a request reaches a language construct that evaluates code, so the attacker's text is executed rather than treated as data.

The injected code runs with the web server's privileges, giving the attacker the same access to the database and filesystem as WordPress itself. For Ninja Forms the fix is 3.15.2: builds 3.14.10 – 3.15.1 are affected, anything from 3.15.2 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 3.15.2, 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. Classes like this one can leave something behind, so the staged malware scanner is the second half: it looks for dropped files and modified code rather than for the request that created them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Ninja Forms 3.15.2 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Scanner
  • Login Security

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-80437https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/f976f8d6-018e-4a96-b2b3-a18a729e0023https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-80437

Related records

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