Description

The Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons WordPress plugin before 3.0.1 does not properly escape a value taken from the incoming request before outputting it in an inline JavaScript event handler, leading to Reflected Cross-Site Scripting which is triggered when a user interacts with the affected button. Exploitation requires the Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons WordPress plugin before 3.0.1 to be running a non-default icon display configuration.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.1",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-02T06:17:17.130Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-02T06:17:17.130Z",
  "executiveSummary": "The Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons WordPress plugin contains a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability due to improper input sanitization and output encoding. The vulnerability exists within the plugin's handling of user-supplied data that is subsequently rendered inside inline JavaScript event handlers.\nThis flaw allows an unauthenticated attacker to inject malicious JavaScript into the victim's browser session. By convincing a user to interact with a crafted sharing button, the attacker can execute arbitrary scripts in the context of the user's session. The impact includes potential session hijacking, unauthorized actions performed on behalf of the user, and the exfiltration of sensitive information.\nExploitation is contingent upon the use of a non-default icon display configuration, which alters how the plugin handles dynamic request parameters. As the vulnerability is reflected in nature, it does not require authentication; however, it necessitates user interaction, specifically the trigger of the malicious button. This vulnerability affects all versions of the Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons plugin prior to 3.0.1. Organizations using this plugin in specific non-default configurations face significant security risks and should prioritize remediation.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability originates from the failure to apply adequate output encoding or sanitization to request parameters before they are processed by the plugin's frontend components. Specifically, user-supplied data ingested via HTTP requests is unsafely embedded directly into inline JavaScript event handlers (such as 'onclick') associated with the plugin's social sharing icons.\nBecause the plugin fails to neutralize malicious payload characters (e.g., quotes, brackets, or script tags) within these attributes, an attacker can break out of the intended JavaScript context. By constructing a URL containing a crafted payload as a request parameter, an attacker can influence the value that the plugin subsequently reflects into the HTML output.\nThe attack flow follows these steps: 1. An attacker identifies the vulnerable endpoint and the specific non-default display configuration required to trigger the reflection point. 2. The attacker crafts a malicious URI containing an XSS payload designed to manipulate the JavaScript event handler. 3. The attacker lures an authenticated or unauthenticated user into visiting the malicious URL. 4. Upon the page load, the plugin processes the malicious parameter and embeds it into the icon's DOM element attribute. 5. The victim interacts with the sharing button, triggering the inline JavaScript event handler, which executes the attacker's injected script within the security context of the victim's browser.\nThe exploitation requirement involving a 'non-default icon display configuration' suggests that the vulnerable code path is only reached when specific logic branches are invoked that handle custom icon rendering. In this state, the plugin assumes input is trusted, allowing for successful injection. The primary technical constraint is the requirement for the victim to perform an interaction action on the specific button to fire the event handler, making this a classic reflected XSS attack vector.\nThe post-exploitation impact is severe, as the injected script inherits the same-origin policy permissions of the WordPress site. An attacker can access cookies (if not marked HttpOnly), modify DOM content, capture form data, or redirect the user to malicious external domains. Given the nature of WordPress, this can be leveraged to conduct site-wide attacks, capture administrative sessions if the victim is a privileged user, or perform actions such as creating new administrative accounts or altering site settings through background AJAX requests."
}