What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-9161: Rank Math SEO – AI SEO Tools to Dominate SEO Rankings <= 1.0.228 - Missing Authorization to Unauthenticated User and Term Metadata Insert, Update, and Delete

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2024-10-05 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-862

Description

The Rank Math SEO – AI SEO Tools to Dominate SEO Rankings plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification and loss of data due to a missing capability check on the 'update_metadata' function in all versions up to, and including, 1.0.228. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to insert new and update existing metadata beginning with 'rank_math', and delete arbitrary existing user metadata and term metadata. Deleting existing usermeta can cause a loss of access to the administrator dashboard for any registered users, including Administrators.

Affected products

• Rank Math SEO: before 1.0.229 — fixed in 1.0.229

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Rank Math SEO 1.0.229. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-shared.php#L120
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-shared.php#L161
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-shared.php#L162
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-shared.php#L64
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3161896/
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/7df39a64-76c5-4ebe-a271-44bd147a3a86?source=cve

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