Vulnerability · Published Mar 26, 2026 · Assigned by Wordfence
CVE-2026-4329Blackhole for Bad Bots <= 3.8 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via User-Agent HTTP Header
High 7.2
In plain English
A high-severity cross-site scripting in Blackhole for Bad Bots from specialk. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.3% (higher than 25% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
The Blackhole for Bad Bots plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the User-Agent HTTP header in all versions up to and including 3.8. This is due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. The plugin uses sanitize_text_field() when capturing bot data (which strips HTML tags but does not escape HTML entities like double quotes), then stores the data via update_option(). When an administrator views the Bad Bots log page, the stored data is output directly into HTML input value attributes (lines 75-83) without esc_attr() and into HTML span content without esc_html(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts that execute when an administrator views the Blackhole Bad Bots admin page.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| specialk | Blackhole for Bad Bots | 0 – through 3.8 |
Weakness: CWE-79 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
References
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/a71992e2-fdac-4e89-8867-4b771d9b4374?source=cve
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/trunk/inc/badbots-register.php#L75
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/trunk/inc/badbots-register.php#L85
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/trunk/inc/badbots-register.php#L79
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/tags/3.8/inc/badbots-register.php#L79
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/tags/3.8/inc/badbots-register.php#L85
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/tags/3.8/inc/badbots-register.php#L75
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/trunk/inc/blackhole-helpers.php#L22
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/tags/3.8/inc/blackhole-helpers.php#L22
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/trunk/inc/blackhole-core.php#L180
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/blackhole-bad-bots/tags/3.8/inc/blackhole-core.php#L180
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?sfp_email=&sfph_mail=&reponame=&old=3487350%40blackhole-bad-bots&new=3487350%40blackhole-bad-bots&sfp_email=&sfph_mail=