SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityDeferred

CVE-2026-111862

The malware may establish persistent access, communicate with rank1cdn[.]com, recreate hidden backdoors on page visits, and expose WordPress credentials, database credentials, API keys, and other secrets accessible to the web server.

CRITICAL 9.8EPSS 0.66%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.66%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

Rank Math SEO PRO for WordPress is affected by a supply-chain compromise in a subset of version 3.0.123 packages downloaded or updated between October 15, 2026 at 20:02 UTC and October 16, 2026 at 07:12 UTC. Rank Math states that the affected plugin files contained malware that could compromise a website if the plugin was activated and directs sites that activated an affected package to treat the website as compromised. The malware may establish persistent access, communicate with rank1cdn[.]com, recreate hidden backdoors on page visits, and expose WordPress credentials, database credentials, API keys, and other secrets accessible to the web server. Rank Math identifies three malicious wp_options keys, hidden PHP backdoors, unauthorized administrator accounts, a fake WordPress core file, PHP-executable .cache files, and a system cron marker as incident indicators. Only packages obtained during the vendor-confirmed window are claimed as affected; version 3.0.123 alone is not sufficient to establish compromise. Rank Math removed the affected files and released version 3.0.124 as the clean replacement.

CVSS 3.1
9.8 CRITICALCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS
0.66% probability · 51th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-506
Source
security@wordfence.com
EPSS trend
0%3%5%20 October 2026: 0.71%27 October 2026: 0.66%20 October 202627 October 2026

EPSS moved from 0.7% on 20 October 2026 to 0.7% on 27 October 2026.

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.