Summary
CVE-2026-65581 is an unauthenticated PHP Object Injection vulnerability in the AI ANN WordPress theme (by Axiomthemes) in all versions up to and including 1.29.0. The flaw stems from deserialization of untrusted data and can be exploited over the network without authentication, earning a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (Critical).
Technical details
- Root cause: Deserialization of untrusted, attacker-controlled data (CWE-502), allowing injection of arbitrary PHP objects.
- Trigger conditions: No authentication or user interaction is required; the attack complexity is low.
- Attack vector: Network (remote). An attacker submits crafted serialized data to the vulnerable theme.
- Impact: Injected PHP objects can lead to high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Where a suitable POP chain is present, this can escalate to remote code execution and full site compromise.
Affected software
- AI ANN WordPress theme (Axiomthemes) — all versions <= 1.29.0.
Severity
- CVSS v3.1 base score: 9.8 (Critical)
- Vector:
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Mitigation and recommended actions
- Immediate: No fixed version was available at the time of publication. Monitor the vendor for a release later than 1.29.0 and update as soon as one is published.
- If no patch: Consider deactivating or removing the AI ANN theme until a fix is available. Restrict access to WordPress endpoints and place the site behind a web application firewall with rules to block PHP Object Injection / serialized-payload attempts.
How IONIX identifies potentially affected assets
IONIX matches the following signals against data already collected when it crawled the asset; identifying the technology sends no request beyond that crawl.
- Raw HTTP response body:
/wp-content/themes/ann/

