QA Assistants <= 5.3.0 — Unauthenticated PHP Object Injection to Remote Code Execution via 'raw_name' and 'dlevent_ver' Parameters

Am I affected?

• Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under QA Assistants – Driven by data.
• No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.

What to do

1. Update to version 5.3.0.1, or a newer patched version
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch QA Assistants – Driven by data to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Supakiad S. (m3ez).

The QA Assistants – Driven by data plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to PHP Object Injection in all versions up to, and including, 5.3.0 via the 'dlevent_ver' parameter. This is due to unrestricted PHP deserialization via wrap_unserialize_static() calling unserialize() without an allowed_classes restriction, combined with serialize_escape() failing to sanitize path traversal sequences in the raw_name parameter. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject a PHP Object. The Guzzle FileCookieJar gadget present in the plugin's bundled Composer dependencies can be leveraged to perform an Arbitrary File Write, writing attacker-controlled content to an attacker-chosen filename, which can result in Remote Code Execution. Exploitation requires triggering the qahm_cron_data_manage scheduled event via wp-cron.php to invoke the deserialization sink against a planted queue file, but this endpoint requires no authentication and fires automatically on a two-minute schedule.

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. Nov 6, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity high, CVSS 8.8

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated