CVE-2026-74921: Document Gallery cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability
medium 6.8 published 2026-10-19
- Affected versions
- 4.0 to 5.1.1
- Fixed in
- 5.1.2 *
- Latest version
- 5.1.2
- Severity
- Medium · CVSS 6.8
- Active installs
- 8,000+
- Type
- Cross-site scripting (XSS)
* 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: An admin-level account (per the CVSS score).
- 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 WPScan): CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
What to do now
- Update Document Gallery to 5.1.2 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 Document Gallery issue.
With WP-CLI:
wp plugin get document-gallery --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 Document Gallery WordPress plugin through 5.1.1 does not sanitise or escape several gallery shortcode attributes before embedding them in a single-quoted HTML attribute in the rendered gallery markup, allowing users with the Contributor role and above to inject arbitrary event handlers that execute when a higher privileged user views the content.
References
- NVD CVE-2026-74921 nvd.nist.gov
- WPScan advisory wpscan.com
Related
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/document-gallery (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.