CVE-2026-96564

SEOPress <= 10.2 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Author Display Name

2026-10-02 17:22
Adrien Brunner

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 10.3
Affected Plugin
SEOPress – AI SEO Plugin & On-site SEO
Affected Version
<= 10.2
CVSS
7.2High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2026-96564
View all SEOPress – AI SEO Plugin & On-site SEO vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2026-96564 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the SEOPress WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 10.2. 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 10.3; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2026, reported by Adrien Brunner.

Vulnerability Overview

The SEOPress – AI SEO Plugin & On-site SEO plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Author Display Name in all versions up to, and including, 10.2 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. Exploitation requires the 'Track Authors' custom dimension to be configured in the plugin's Google Analytics 4 or Matomo settings, and the attacker must be able to publish public singular content (e.g., via bbPress forum topics) so that the injected display name is rendered in the tracking script.

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 SEOPress <= 10.2 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 SEOPress the fix is 10.3: builds <= 10.2 are affected, anything from 10.3 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 10.3, 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: SEOPress 10.3 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-2026-96564https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/8f5f5b75-abaf-4e4b-8509-f8b569519166https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-96564

Related records

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