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Broken Link Checker <= 2.4.14.1 — Unauthenticated Arbitrary Shortcode Execution via parser_callback

CVE-2026-96562Published · Updated

Action summary

Affected: ≤2.4.14.1Update to 2.4.15 or newer

All remediation steps
Watch plugin
Severity
Medium6.5
CVSS
6.5
CVSS 3.1 · CNA (Wordfence)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
What does this vector mean?
AV:N Attack vector
Network
AC:L Attack complexity
Low
PR:N Privileges required
None
UI:N User interaction
None
S:U Scope
Unchanged
C:L Confidentiality
Low
I:L Integrity
Low
A:N Availability
None
Weakness
CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code
Required access
No account needed
Exploit prediction (EPSS)
0.3% chance in 30 days20th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
On this page8

Am I affected?

Broken Link Checker broken-link-checker

  1. Affected≤ 2.4.14.1
  2. Patched in2.4.15

Update to 2.4.15 or newer.

You are affected if you run ≤ 2.4.14.1. Version 2.4.15 and later are not affected by this issue.

  • Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under Broken Link Checker.
  • 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 2.4.15, or a newer patched version
  2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
  3. Watch Broken Link Checker to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Jakub Herman.

The The Broken Link Checker plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary shortcode execution in all versions up to, and including, 2.4.14.1. This is due to the software allowing users to execute an action that does not properly validate a value before running do_shortcode. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shortcodes. Exploitation requires that a submitted comment containing the shortcode payload in an href or src attribute is approved through the site's normal comment moderation workflow; once approved, the shortcode is executed automatically via WP-Cron without any further attacker interaction.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

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

Advisories & patches

More in Broken Link Checker

All 17
More vulnerabilities in Broken Link Checker
SeverityVulnerabilityCVEPublished
Medium5.3Unauthenticated Arbitrary HTML Attribute Injection
≤2.4.14.1Update to 2.4.15
CVE-2026-102389
Medium5.5Authenticated (Editor+) Server-Side Request Forgery
≤2.4.14Update to 2.4.14.1
CVE-2026-84772
High7.2Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment Author URL / Link Log
≤2.4.13Update to 2.4.13.1
CVE-2026-75528
Critical9.8Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution
<2.4.12Update to 2.4.12
CVE-2026-18937
Medium4.9Authenticated (Editor+) SQL Injection
≤2.4.7Update to 2.4.8
CVE-2026-39466

Timeline

  1. CVE published

    Severity medium, CVSS 6.5

  2. Record last updated

Sources & licenses

Wordfence record
Vulnerability data
Wordfence Intelligence. Copyright 2012-2026 Defiant Inc. Licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0.
CVE® identifiers
Copyright 1999-2026 The MITRE Corporation. Used under the CVE Program. CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.
CVSS / CWE
National Vulnerability Database (NVD), shown unmodified. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
EPSS
Exploit Prediction Scoring System by FIRST.org.
VulnCrest content
Summary, remediation guidance and page layout © VulnCrest. Not sourced from NVD.

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