Live Exposure Defense: From CVE to Confirmed Exposure in 12 Hours – See more

Back
New CVE Detected

CVE-2026-40798 – Unauthenticated SQL Injection – WordPress wpForo Forum Plugin ≤ 3.0.4

Be the first to know when new zero-days emerge:

Subscribe to Email Alerts
Subscribe to RSS Feed

Summary

CVE-2026-40798 is a critical unauthenticated SQL Injection vulnerability in the wpForo Forum WordPress plugin, affecting all versions up to and including 3.0.4. The flaw arises from insufficient validation of user-supplied sorting parameters passed into forum topic database queries, classified under CWE-89 (Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command). With a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.3 (Critical), any WordPress site running wpForo with its forum publicly accessible is exposed to unauthenticated remote exploitation.

Technical details

  • Root cause: The plugin fails to adequately sanitize or parameterize user-supplied values in the topics sorting (ORDER BY) parameter before they are incorporated into SQL queries, enabling an attacker to manipulate the structure of those queries.
  • Trigger conditions: No authentication is required. An attacker sends a specially crafted HTTP request to a publicly accessible wpForo forum endpoint, injecting malicious SQL via the sorting parameter — no login credentials or user interaction needed.
  • Attack vector: Fully network-accessible and unauthenticated (AV:N, PR:N, UI:N) with Low attack complexity (AC:L), making exploitation straightforward and automatable at scale.
  • Impact: The Changed scope (S:C) combined with High Confidentiality impact (C:H) means a successful attack can exfiltrate data beyond the plugin’s own database scope — potentially the entire WordPress database, including user credentials, hashed passwords, email addresses, and site configuration. A Low Availability impact (A:L) indicates a potential for limited service disruption.

Affected software

  • wpForo Forum (by Tomdever / gVectors Team) — all versions ≤ 3.0.4

Severity

  • CVSS v3.1 Base Score: 9.3 (Critical)
  • Vector String: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:L
  • CWE: CWE-89 – Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command

Mitigation and recommended actions

  • Immediate: Upgrade wpForo Forum to version 3.0.5 or later. The 3.0.5 release (April 13, 2026) directly addresses this vulnerability; its changelog entry reads "Security: Hardened sorting parameter validation."
  • If immediate patching is not feasible, restrict public access to wpForo forum pages using web application firewall rules or network controls to block unauthenticated requests carrying SQL injection patterns until the upgrade can be applied.

IONIX Status

The IONIX research team is tracking ongoing exploitation attempts and recommends immediate patching. Potentially affected assets are outlined in this post.

References

Are you exposed?

Get a free report of your organization’s exposure to this CVE and threat

  • Mapping of all Assets with this Technology
  • Identification of potentially exposed assets to this CVE
  • Confirmation of verified exploitable assets
Get Exposure Report

How IONIX’s External Exposure Management Platform Detects and Validates
Zero-Days to Shrink MTTR

1

Map your entire attack surface (continously)

IONIX uses multi-factor discovery methods, including DNS analysis, certificate mapping, metadata inspection, and more, to automatically map every internet-facing asset across your environment. This includes cloud instances, third-party platforms, shadow IT, and even forgotten infrastructure that traditional tools miss.

2

Monitor for new CVEs

Dozens of threat intel feeds using agentic technology are continuously analyzed to detect the appearance of proof-of-concept code, exploit kits, and indicators of active targeting. IONIX goes further by applying AI to proactively evaluate whether emerging vulnerabilities are likely to be exploited, even before PoCs go public.

3

Identify Potential External Exposures

Not all CVEs matter. IONIX filters vulnerabilities by asking attacker-centric questions: Can it be reached from the internet? Does it require authentication? Is it being exploited in the wild? This dramatically reduces noise and focuses teams on threats that can actually be weaponized.

4

Create Safe, Scalable Exploit Validations

IONIX transforms real-world PoCs into safe, non-intrusive test payloads that can be run in production environments without disruption. These simulations are precisely targeted to the systems that are vulnerable, ensuring rapid validation without unnecessary load.

5

Execute Exploit Validations

By combining context about software stack, versioning, exposure status, and reachability, IONIX ensures that only the right payloads are executed against the right assets, maximizing efficiency and minimizing risk.

6

Drive Fast and Actionable Remediation

Results are routed through integrations with ticketing, SOAR, and SIEM tools. Issues are written in plain language, bundled into remediation clusters, and prioritized based on asset criticality, exploitability, and blast radius. This shortens mean time to remediation (MTTR) and empowers teams to act with confidence.

Are you exposed?

Get a free report of your organization’s exposure to this CVE and threat

  • Mapping of all Assets with this Technology
  • Identification of potentially exposed assets to this CVE
  • Confirmation of verified exploitable assets
Get Exposure Report
Close

Subscribe to Threat Center RSS

Copy/paste the link below into your preferred RSS reader or follow these instructions to subscribe to Slack alerts.

Open RSS feedSlack setup instructions

Close

Get Real-Time CVE Alerts to Your Email

Be the first to know when new zero-days emerge