What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-3523: Apocalypse Meow <= 22.1.0 - Authenticated (Administrator+) SQL Injection via 'type' Parameter

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.9 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: 2026-03-05 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-89

Description

The Apocalypse Meow plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection via the 'type' parameter in all versions up to, and including, 22.1.0. This is due to a flawed logical operator in the type validation check on line 261 of ajax.php — the condition uses `&&` (AND) instead of `||` (OR), causing the `in_array()` validation to be short-circuited and never evaluated for any non-empty type value. Combined with `stripslashes_deep()` being called on line 101 which removes `wp_magic_quotes()` protection, attacker-controlled single quotes pass through unescaped into the SQL query on line 298. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Administrator-level access and above, to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.

Affected products

• blobfolio Apocalypse Meow: through 22.1.0

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/tags/22.1.0/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L101
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/tags/22.1.0/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L167
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/tags/22.1.0/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L261
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/tags/22.1.0/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L298
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/trunk/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L101
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/trunk/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L167
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/trunk/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L261
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/apocalypse-meow/trunk/lib/blobfolio/wp/meow/ajax.php#L298
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?sfp_email=&sfph_mail=&reponame=&old=3448958%40apocalypse-meow&new=3448958%40apocalypse-meow&sfp_email=&sfph_mail=
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/a1af9757-23e9-41d2-bbcd-15b0610b6538?source=cve

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