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.
Metrics
Affected Vendors & Products
Advisories
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Fixes
Solution
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Workaround
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References
History
Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
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| 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 |
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| Metrics |
cvssV3_1
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: Wordfence
Published:
Updated: 2026-10-01T07:40:23.197Z
Reserved: 2026-08-14T19:15:32.388Z
Link: CVE-2026-19902
No data.
Status : Deferred
Published: 2026-10-01T08:16:51.580
Modified: 2026-10-01T12:40:28.083
Link: CVE-2026-19902
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
Updated: 2026-10-01T09:45:04Z
Weaknesses