CVE-2026-96278

WP Photo Album Plus <= 9.3.03.002 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via REQUEST_URI Session History

2026-10-09 18:46
nh4tvd

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 9.3.03.003
Affected Plugin
WP Photo Album Plus
Affected Version
<= 9.3.03.002
CVSS
7.2High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2026-96278
View all WP Photo Album Plus vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2026-96278 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the WP Photo Album Plus WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 9.3.03.002. 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 9.3.03.003; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2026, reported by nh4tvd.

Vulnerability Overview

The WP Photo Album Plus plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via REQUEST_URI Session History in all versions up to, and including, 9.3.03.002 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. The bypass works because esc_url_raw() strips literal angle brackets but retains HTML entities, which wppaEntityDecode() silently converts back to live HTML tags before jQuery('#wppa-modal-container').html() renders them.

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')

WP Photo Album Plus <= 9.3.03.002 carries this weakness at esc_url_raw(), 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 WP Photo Album Plus the fix is 9.3.03.003: builds <= 9.3.03.002 are affected, anything from 9.3.03.003 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 9.3.03.003, 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: WP Photo Album Plus 9.3.03.003 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-2026-96278https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/095e93d0-ad0d-4613-887e-5e47a2ef2b96https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-96278

Related records

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