CVE-2026-80514

wpForo Forum 3.0.0 - 3.1.5 - Unauthenticated AI Credit Exhaustion

2026-09-22 00:00
Usama Arshad

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 3.1.6
Affected Plugin
wpForo Forum
Affected Version
3.0.0 – 3.1.5
CVSS
5.3Medium
Weakness type
CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CVE
CVE-2026-80514
View all wpForo Forum vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2026-80514 is a medium-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the wpForo Forum WordPress plugin, affecting versions 3.0.0 – 3.1.5. It carries a CVSS score of 5.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.1.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2026, reported by Usama Arshad.

Vulnerability Overview

The wpForo Forum plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Denial of Service in versions 3.0.0 through 3.1.5. This is due to trust in attacker-controlled HTTP headers (HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR) over REMOTE_ADDR for IP-based rate limiting in the get_client_ip() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to exhaust the site owner's metered AI credits by repeatedly spoofing the IP address header used to key per-visitor rate limits, bypassing the restriction entirely.

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-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

wpForo Forum 3.0.0 – 3.1.5 carries this weakness at get_client_ip(), and reaching it takes no account at all. Uncontrolled resource consumption means a request can make the server do an amount of work it never bounds, because the size or repetition of the job is taken from the request rather than capped by the code.

A single caller can hold PHP workers, database connections or disk open long enough to slow the site for everyone, without needing any account or any other flaw. For wpForo Forum the fix is 3.1.6: builds 3.0.0 – 3.1.5 are affected, anything from 3.1.6 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 3.1.6, 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: wpForo Forum 3.1.6 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-2026-80514https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/a2bf482a-fea3-40a1-b97a-3b45ed1f81fbhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-80514

Related records

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