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MEDIUM

Ad Inserter <= 2.8.18 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting via {search-query} Dynamic Tag (Referer Header)

Published Oct 1, 2026

Description

The Ad Inserter – Ad Manager & AdSense Ads plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Reflected Cross-Site Scripting via the Referer header in all versions up to, and including, 2.8.18 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping on the '{search-query}' dynamic tag. When an ad block's code contains that tag, replace_ai_tags() reads $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] and tests it with the regex /[\.\/](google|yahoo|bing|ask)\.[a-z\.]{2,5}[\/]/i. The leading [\.\/] class matches a literal slash, so any referrer merely containing a segment such as '/google.com/' passes as a search-engine referral; the plugin then percent-decodes the referring query with parse_str() and substitutes the resulting 'q' (or 'p') value into the block via preg_replace() with no escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary JavaScript in the context of the site for any visitor, including a signed-in administrator, by luring them to an attacker-controlled page that frames or links to any ordinary post. Exploitation requires the site to have an ad block whose code uses the '{search-query}' tag with automatic insertion enabled — a documented plugin feature used as intended.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

References (9)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner Wordfence
Published Oct 1, 2026
Updated Oct 3, 2026
Reserved Aug 14, 2026
CISA Vulnrichment
Updated Oct 3, 2026
NVD
Status Deferred
Modified Oct 3, 2026
Red Hat
Severity n/a
Public date n/a
ENISA EUVD
Assigner Wordfence
Published Oct 1, 2026
Updated Oct 3, 2026
Exploited since n/a
EUVD-2026-90545