CVE-2026-78471
The Autoptimize plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment Author Name in all versions up to, and including, 3.1.15.1 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.22%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
The Autoptimize plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment Author Name in all versions up to, and including, 3.1.15.1 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. Exploitation requires an administrator to have enabled Autoptimize's 'Lazy-load images?' option, the w3-total-cache/w3-total-cache.php file to be present on disk with the plugin disabled, a class named Minify_HTML to be loaded into scope by another plugin, and the malicious comment to be approved by a moderator before the payload renders.
- CVSS 3.1
- 5.4 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
- EPSS
- 0.22% probability · 13th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-79
- Source
- security@wordfence.com
EPSS moved from 0.2% on 2 October 2026 to 0.2% on 26 October 2026.
References
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/autoptimize/tags/3.1.15.1/classes/autoptimizeImages.php#L1232
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/autoptimize/tags/3.1.15.1/classes/autoptimizeImages.php#L908
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/autoptimize/tags/3.1.15.1/classes/autoptimizeImages.php#L960
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3713884/autoptimize/trunk/classes/autoptimizeImages.php
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&new=3713884%40autoptimize%2Ftags%2F3.1.16&old=3657650%40autoptimize%2Ftags%2F3.1.15.1
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/b14f574d-1490-423e-9ef3-ce8f844cb8f0?source=cve
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.