# CVE-2026-116522: CVE-2026-116522

Status: published. Published: 2026-10-31. Updated: 2026-11-01.

The Relevanssi – A Better Search plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the 'comment' parameter in all versions up to, and including, 4.28.5 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. This requires the site to have both the comment indexing and comment highlighting options enabled, and the payload only fires when a visitor reaches a singular page via a Relevanssi search-result permalink carrying the highlight query parameter.

## Remediation

No remediation reported in collected sources

## Affected products and versions

Not reported in collected sources.

## Severity and prioritization

- CVSS 3.1: 7.2 (high); CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N; source: NVD: security@wordfence.com

- CISA KEV: No listing in collected sources

- EPSS: Not available

- SSVC: exploitation none; automatable no; technical impact partial; source NVD SSVC: 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

- Weaknesses: CWE-79

## Exploit evidence

No exploit evidence in collected sources. This is not proof of no exploitation.

## References

- https://github.com/msaari/relevanssi/commit/b0324957b27e2dfc2aa116c96dcf578fbec9e0e5 (security@wordfence.com)

- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/common.php#L1037 (security@wordfence.com)

- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L1698 (security@wordfence.com)

- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L521 (security@wordfence.com)

- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L688 (security@wordfence.com)

- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/init.php#L140 (security@wordfence.com)

- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&new=3767703%40relevanssi%2Ftags%2F4.28.6&old=3761637%40relevanssi%2Ftags%2F4.28.5 (security@wordfence.com)

- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/442403ae-9011-4373-a363-e98e07ec7e9b?source=cve (security@wordfence.com)

## Provenance

- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-116522; retrieved 2026-11-02; source updated 2026-11-01

Revision: c098bb33daf15f059b2c4ab03a0a3e5a4887a3362bc1d359db768d7d13fc435c

Canonical: https://y2.dev/cve/CVE-2026-116522