CVE-2026-116609: WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) SQL injection vulnerability
medium 6.5 published 2026-10-28 · updated 2026-10-29
- Affected versions
- 8.8 and older
- Fixed in
- 8.9 *
- Latest version
- 8.9
- Severity
- Medium · CVSS 6.5
- Active installs
- 20,000+
- Type
- SQL 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 Contributor-level access or higher.
CVSS vector (score by Wordfence): CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
What to do now
- Update WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) to 8.9 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 WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) issue.
With WP-CLI:
wp plugin get wp-stats-manager --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 WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection via the 'from' (and sibling 'to'/'first'/'second') shortcode attribute of the [wsm_showTrafficStatsList] shortcode in versions up to, and including, 8.8 This is due to insufficient escaping on the user-supplied attribute and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query: `shortcode_atts()` returns attacker-supplied shortcode attributes verbatim (WP core performs no sanitization), only `$atts['id']` is re-sanitized afterward, and the raw value is then concatenated into a double-quoted SQL string literal inside `fnGetHourlyReportByDateNameTimeZone()` (`includes/wsm_db.php:1449`) and executed via `$wpdb->get_results()`. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Contributor-level access and above, to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.
References
- NVD CVE-2026-116609 nvd.nist.gov
- Wordfence advisory www.wordfence.com
- Code change (fix) plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- Plugin source plugins.trac.wordpress.org
Related
Ran an affected version? Check your site for signs of a hack
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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/wp-stats-manager (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.