CVE-2021-24509: Page View Counts < 2.4.9 - Contributor+ Stored XSS

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.4 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2021-08-09 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-79

Description

The Page View Count WordPress plugin before 2.4.9 does not escape the postid parameter of pvc_stats shortcode, allowing users with a role as low as Contributor to perform Stored XSS attacks. A post made by a contributor would still have to be approved by an admin to have the XSS triggered in the frontend, however, higher privilege users, such as editor could exploit this without the need of approval, and even when the blog disallows the unfiltered_html capability.

Affected products

Page View Count: before 2.4.9 — fixed in 2.4.9

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Page View Count 2.4.9. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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