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.
Published: 2026-10-01
Score: 6.1 Medium
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

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Remediation

No vendor fix or workaround currently provided.

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Tracking

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Advisories

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History

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title Ad Inserter <= 2.8.18 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting via {search-query} Dynamic Tag (Referer Header)
Weaknesses CWE-79
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.1, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N'}

Subscriptions

No data.

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: Wordfence

Published:

Updated: 2026-10-01T07:40:23.197Z

Reserved: 2026-08-14T19:15:32.388Z

Link: CVE-2026-19902

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Deferred

Published: 2026-10-01T08:16:51.580

Modified: 2026-10-01T12:40:28.083

Link: CVE-2026-19902

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-10-01T09:45:04Z

Weaknesses