Is Contest Gallery safe? Known vulnerabilities and latest version

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in Wasiliy Strecker Contest Gallery contest-gallery allows Stored XSS.This issue affects Contest Gallery: from n/a through 34.0.1.

The Contest Gallery WordPress plugin before 34.0.1 does not reliably validate the visitor identity used to enforce its one-vote-per-entry restriction, trusting a client-supplied request header and an unbound client-generated token, which allows unauthenticated users to bypass the restriction and cast multiple votes for the same contest entry, inflating its vote total.

The Contest Gallery WordPress plugin before 33.0.1 does not limit the number of attempts against its front-end registration email-verification step, which relies on a short numeric PIN, allowing unauthenticated attackers to brute-force the PIN and create and activate a WordPress account bound to an email address they do not own, gaining an authenticated session.

The Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Overwrite in all versions up to, and including, 32.0.1 due to insufficient file path validation in the 'baseUrlForFacebook' parameter. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to overwrite known files which may lead to remote code execution when certain preconditions are met.

Unauthenticated Cross Site Scripting (XSS) in Contest Gallery <= 30.0.5 versions.

The Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Second-Order SQL Injection via MultipleFiles Second-Order Payload via 'cg_multiple_files_for_post' -> 'cgRealId' in all versions up to, and including, 30.0.7 due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with author-level access and above, to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.

The Contest Gallery WordPress plugin before 30.0.7 does not route its front-end login through the standard WordPress authentication flow, issuing an authentication cookie directly after the password check, which bypasses installed brute-force-protection and two-factor-authentication Contest Gallery WordPress plugin before 30.0.7 and enables unlimited, unthrottled password guessing against any account (including administrators) up to full account takeover.

The Contest Gallery WordPress plugin before 30.0.7 does not perform any capability or nonce check in one of its handlers, allowing any authenticated user down to Subscriber to read the site's entire stored OpenAI prompt history.

The Contest Gallery WordPress plugin before 30.0.7 does not perform per-object capability or nonce checks in one of its post-deletion handlers, gating it only by a coarse role-membership test, which allows any Author-level or higher user to permanently delete arbitrary posts, pages, and other content they do not own.

Unauthenticated Cross Site Scripting (XSS) in Contest Gallery <= 30.0.6 versions.

Contributor SQL Injection in Contest Gallery <= 30.0.0 versions.

The Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 30.0.2 via the `RegistryUserRole` parameter. This is due to the plugin's admin menu being registered at the `edit_posts` capability level — granting Contributor-level users access to the plugin's admin pages and a valid `cg_admin` nonce — while the option-saving handler in `change-options-and-sizes.php` performs no `current_user_can()` capability check beyond `check_admin_referer('cg_admin')`, and the `RegistryUserRole` value is processed only through `sanitize_text_field()` and `htmlentities()` without restriction to an allowlist of permitted role names. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with author-level access and above, to overwrite the plugin's stored `RegistryUserRole` option with `administrator`, which the `cg_create_wp_user_from_google_user` function then reads back from the `contest_gal1ery_registry_and_login_options` database table without any allowlist validation and passes directly to `wp_update_user()`, effectively promoting a newly registered Google sign-in account to Administrator.

Subscriber Cross Site Scripting (XSS) in Contest Gallery <= 28.1.6 versions.

Unauthenticated Other Vulnerability Type in Contest Gallery <= 28.1.7 versions.

Subscriber Sensitive Data Exposure in Contest Gallery <= 28.1.7 versions.

Unauthenticated SQL Injection in Contest Gallery <= 28.1.6 versions.

The Contest Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection via the 'form_input' parameter in versions up to, and including, 28.1.6. This is due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query inside the unauthenticated 'post_cg_gallery_form_upload' AJAX action (specifically the 'cb' branch of the included users-upload-check.php, where $f_input_id is concatenated unquoted into 'SELECT Field_Content FROM ... WHERE id = $f_input_id'). The endpoint is gated only by a public frontend nonce ('cg1l_action' / 'cg_nonce') that is exposed in the page source of any public gallery page. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.

Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel vulnerability in Wasiliy Strecker / ContestGallery developer Contest Gallery contest-gallery allows Authentication Abuse.This issue affects Contest Gallery: from n/a through <= 28.1.2.2.

Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in Wasiliy Strecker / ContestGallery developer Contest Gallery contest-gallery allows Server Side Request Forgery.This issue affects Contest Gallery: from n/a through <= 28.1.2.1.

The Contest Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to an authentication bypass leading to admin account takeover in all versions up to, and including, 28.1.5. This is due to the email confirmation handler in `users-registry-check-after-email-or-pin-confirmation.php` using the user's email string in a `WHERE ID = %s` clause instead of the numeric user ID, combined with an unauthenticated key-based login endpoint in `ajax-functions-frontend.php`. When the non-default `RegMailOptional=1` setting is enabled, an attacker can register with a crafted email starting with the target user ID (e.g., `1poc@example.test`), trigger the confirmation flow to overwrite the admin's `user_activation_key` via MySQL integer coercion, and then use the `post_cg1l_login_user_by_key` AJAX action to authenticate as the admin without any credentials. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to take over any WordPress administrator account and gain full site control.

The Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to blind SQL Injection via the ‘cgLostPasswordEmail’ and the ’cgl_mail’ parameter in all versions up to, and including, 28.1.4 due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database. The vulnerability's ’cgLostPasswordEmail’ parameter was patched in version 28.1.4, and the ’cgl_mail’ parameter was patched in version 28.1.5.

Missing Authorization vulnerability in Wasiliy Strecker / ContestGallery developer Contest Gallery contest-gallery allows Exploiting Incorrectly Configured Access Control Security Levels.This issue affects Contest Gallery: from n/a through <= 28.1.1.

The Contest Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to authorization bypass in all versions up to, and including, 28.0.2. This is due to the plugin registering the `cg_check_wp_admin_upload_v10` AJAX action for both authenticated and unauthenticated users without implementing capability checks or nonce verification. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary WordPress media attachments into galleries and manipulate gallery metadata via the `cg_check_wp_admin_upload_v10` action. It does not enable an attacker to move or upload files.

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Wasiliy Strecker / ContestGallery developer Contest Gallery contest-gallery allows Cross Site Request Forgery.This issue affects Contest Gallery: from n/a through <= 28.0.0.

The Contest Gallery – Upload, Vote & Sell with PayPal and Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to CSV Injection in all versions up to, and including, 27.0.3 via gallery submissions. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to embed untrusted input into exported CSV files, which can result in code execution when these files are downloaded and opened on a local system with a vulnerable configuration.

The Contest Gallery – Upload, Vote & Sell with PayPal and Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via multiple form field parameters in all versions up to, and including, 27.0.2. This is due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping on user-supplied attributes. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with author-level access or higher, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.

The Photos, Files, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Ecommerce Contest Gallery – Upload, Vote, Sell via PayPal or Stripe, Social Share Buttons, OpenAI plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the comment feature in all versions up to, and including, 26.1.0 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in Wasiliy Strecker / ContestGallery developer Contest Gallery contest-gallery allows Stored XSS.This issue affects Contest Gallery: from n/a through <= 26.0.6.

The Photos, Files, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Ecommerce Contest Gallery – Upload, Vote, Sell via PayPal or Stripe, Social Share Buttons, OpenAI plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the 'upload[1][title]' parameter in all versions up to, and including, 26.0.8 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Author-level access and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.

Contest Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the ‘id’ parameter in all versions up to, and including, 26.0.6 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Contributor-level access and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.