Description

Unauthenticated Cross Site Scripting (XSS) in Social Media & Share Icons <= 2.9.9 versions.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.1",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-24T12:16:53.270Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-24T12:16:53.270Z",
  "executiveSummary": "An unauthenticated Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability has been identified in the Social Media & Share Icons plugin affecting versions 2.9.9 and prior. This security flaw introduces significant risk by allowing remote attackers to inject malicious client-side scripts, typically JavaScript, into web pages rendered to unsuspecting end users. The vulnerability arises from improper handling of user-supplied data within the vulnerable component, lacking adequate input sanitization or output encoding mechanisms before rendering the content within the Document Object Model (DOM).\nThe primary impact of this vulnerability includes session hijacking, credential theft, redirection to malicious destinations, and unauthorized actions performed within the context of the victim's browser session. Because the vulnerability is unauthenticated, threat actors require no prior access credentials or elevated privileges to execute the exploit. Exploitation is entirely network-based, typically requiring the victim to interact with a crafted URL or navigate to a compromised page where the malicious payload is reflected or stored. Organizations utilizing affected versions face potential compromise of user trust, data integrity violations, and further pivoting opportunities for attackers targeting web application users.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability stems from insufficient validation and sanitization of input parameters processed by the Social Media & Share Icons plugin <= 2.9.9 versions, coupled with the absence of proper context-aware output encoding. When the application processes incoming HTTP requests containing malicious payloads, it improperly echoes the input back into the HTTP response or stores it insecurely, allowing the browser to interpret the injected strings as executable code rather than inert text data.\nThe attack flow begins with an unauthenticated attacker crafting a malicious Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or submitting specially formatted input containing arbitrary JavaScript payloads targeting the vulnerable component. Network exposure is external, as the vulnerable parameters are directly accessible via standard HTTP/HTTPS requests over the web interface. No authentication requirements or privilege requirements exist for the initiation of the attack, lowering the barrier to entry for potential threat actors.\nUpon transmission of the malicious payload, the affected component processes the request and embeds the unescaped input directly into the HTML document structure. When a victim's browser parses the response, the injected payload executes within the security context of the victim's session. Depending on the specific payload behavior, this execution can facilitate post-exploitation impact such as the exfiltration of sensitive session cookies, manipulation of DOM elements to deface the page, keylogging, or forcing the victim's browser to execute unauthorized administrative actions if administrative sessions are concurrently active.\nThe vulnerability explicitly affects the Social Media & Share Icons plugin across all versions up to and including 2.9.9. The lack of strict input filtering mechanisms within the affected functions enables successful payload delivery and subsequent execution without triggering application-layer security exceptions."
}