Download Monitor <= 5.2.10 — Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Cross-Origin postMessage to Admin Editor

Am I affected?

• Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under Download Monitor.
• No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.
• No account is needed to exploit this. Treat any exposed site on an affected version as at risk.

What to do

1. Update to version 5.2.11, or a newer patched version
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch Download Monitor to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to whale120.

The Download Monitor plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Cross-Origin postMessage to Admin Editor in all versions up to, and including, 5.2.10 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. This requires the attacker to trick an authenticated Administrator into visiting an attacker-controlled page that targets an open Download edit screen, after which the payload is persisted unfiltered via the Administrator's unfiltered_html capability and later emitted verbatim to the frontend by the [download_data] shortcode's unescaped post_content render path.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

No public proof-of-concept or detection template is known for this vulnerability.

Advisories & patches

• Advisorywordfence.com

Related CVEs

Timeline

1. Oct 1, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity high, CVSS 7.2

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated