CVE-2026-100159
Tenable Plugin
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Threat Intelligence Pending
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Description
The Popup Box plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Arbitrary Shortcode Execution in versions 6.4.1 to 6.4.2. This is due to the ays_popup_get_user_ip() function reading the client-controlled Client-IP / X-Forwarded-For / Forwarded / X-Forwarded / Forwarded-For request headers, sanitizing them only with sanitize_text_field() (which does not strip the bracket, quote, space, or '=' characters used by shortcode syntax), substituting the value into a popup body wherever the %%user_ip_address%% token appears (a raw str_replace with no escaping in Ays_Pb_Data::replace_message_variables()), and then passing the resulting body to do_shortcode() in Ays_Pb_Public::ays_autoembed() at output on the wp_footer hook. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary registered shortcodes with attacker-supplied attributes on the server whenever an administrator has added the %%user_ip_address%% token to a popup's Custom Content body, which can be leveraged to read arbitrary data or perform other actions exposed by shortcodes installed on the site.
Quick Facts
| CVE ID | CVE-2026-100159 |
| CVSS Score | 4.8 |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N |
| Published | 2026-10-16 |
| Exploited | No |
| CISA KEV | No |
| PoC | Not public |
References
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ays-popup-box/tag…
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ays-popup-box/tag…
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ays-popup-box/tag…
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ays-popup-box/tag…
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ays-popup-box/tag…
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ays-popup-box/tag…
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/53…