What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-5618: Modern Footnotes <= 1.4.16 - Authenticated (Contributor+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Shortcode

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.4 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-10-20 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-79

Description

The Modern Footnotes plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the plugin's shortcode in versions up to, and including, 1.4.16 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping on user supplied attributes. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with contributor-level permissions and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.

Affected products

• prismtechstudios Modern Footnotes: before 1.4.17 — fixed in 1.4.17

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: prismtechstudios Modern Footnotes 1.4.17. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/2980695/modern-footnotes
• https://research.cleantalk.org/cve-2023-5618-modern-footnotes-stored-xss-via-shortcode-poc/
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/c20c674f-54b5-470f-b470-07a63501eb4d?source=cve
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/2980695/modern-footnotes
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/c20c674f-54b5-470f-b470-07a63501eb4d?source=cve

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