CVE-2026-93953: Backuply SQL injection vulnerability
high 8.0 published 2026-10-16
- Affected versions
- 1.5.8 and older
- Fixed in
- 1.5.9 *
- Latest version
- 1.6.0
- Severity
- High · CVSS 8.0
- Active installs
- 600,000+
- 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 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 Backuply to 1.5.9 or newer (the latest is 1.6.0): 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 Backuply issue.
With WP-CLI:
wp plugin get backuply --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 Backuply – Backup, Restore, Migrate and Clone plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection via the Biographical Info field (second-order, via restore) in all versions up to, and including, 1.5.8 due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and the lack of sufficient preparation on an existing SQL query. Backuply exports the Biographical Info value verbatim inside an INSERT statement written to the backup's SQL dump (wp_usermeta). When an Administrator later restores such a backup, the crafted payload breaks out of that INSERT statement and appends attacker-controlled SQL that executes with full database privileges. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to write arbitrary data to the database — in particular to update the default_role option in wp_options to administrator (and enable open user registration) — so that a subsequently registered account is automatically granted the Administrator role, resulting in privilege escalation and full site takeover. Because the injection executes inside an INSERT during restore with no response returned to the attacker, the primitive is used to modify database records rather than to read existing data directly.
References
- NVD CVE-2026-93953 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
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/backuply (Plugins API), fetched 2026-11-01.
- 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.