CVE-2026-104932: Search Regex PHP object injection vulnerability

high 8.0 published 2026-10-16

Affected versions: 3.5 and older
Fixed in: 3.5.1 *
Latest version: 3.5.1
Severity: High · CVSS 8.0
Active installs: 100,000+
Type: PHP object injection

* The source does not name a fixed version; this is the first wordpress.org release after the last affected version.

What an attacker needs

Access: A logged-in account with Subscriber-level access or higher.
Interaction: It also needs someone on the site (often an admin) to click a link, open a page or submit a form the attacker prepared.

CVSS vector (score by Wordfence): CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

What to do now

Update Search Regex to 3.5.1 or newer: Dashboard → Updates, or Plugins → “update now”.
If you cannot update right away, deactivate it until you can.
Turn on auto-updates for it: Plugins → “Enable auto-updates” on its row.
Not sure which version you run? Check your version against every known Search Regex issue. With WP-CLI: wp plugin get search-regex --field=version.
If you ran an affected version and something looks off (new admin users, spam pages, redirects), run the free scan below.

The advisory

The Search Regex plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to PHP Object Injection in version 3.5 via deserialization of untrusted input in the replace_all function. This allows authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to inject a PHP Object. The additional presence of a POP chain allows attackers to execute code.

Description from the CVE record, published by Wordfence (the CVE Numbering Authority), via the NVD entry for CVE-2026-104932.

References

NVD CVE-2026-104932 nvd.nist.gov
Wordfence advisory www.wordfence.com
Code change (fix) plugins.trac.wordpress.org

Ran an affected version? Check your site for signs of a hack

The free scan reads the public side of your site and looks for spam pages, hidden redirects, injected scripts and blacklist entries. No login, no install, about a minute.

Where this data comes from

CVE record, score and references: NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD), checked 2026-11-04. This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
Versions and install counts: wordpress.org/plugins/search-regex (Plugins API), fetched 2026-11-04.
The summary, “what an attacker needs” and “what to do” sections are our plain-English reading of the record and the plugin's release history; the quoted description is the record's own text. Spot an error? Email Daniel.