WordPress Plugin Vulnerabilities

Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content < 4.17.0 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Arbitrary Shortcode Execution via First Name / Last Name Profile Field

Description

The The Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary shortcode execution in all versions up to, and including, 4.16.19. This is due to the software allowing users to execute an action that does not properly validate a value before running do_shortcode. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to execute arbitrary shortcodes. The partial mitigation introduced via strip_shortcodes() on [profile-first-name] and [profile-last-name] can be bypassed through the [profile-display-name format="first_last_names"] render path, the [profile-bio] render path (which re-fetches the raw description meta), and the double-bracket escape sequence [[tag]], all of which allow attacker-controlled shortcode text to reach the outer do_shortcode() call.

Affects Plugins

Fixed in 4.17.0

References

Classification

Type
RCE
OWASP top 10
CWE

Miscellaneous

Original Researcher
stealthcopter, Kishan Vyas
Verified
No

Timeline

Publicly Published
2026-08-15 (about 2 months ago)
Added
2026-08-15 (about 2 months ago)
Last Updated
2026-08-16 (about 2 months ago)

Other