CVE-2022-51021 — WordPress
HIGHCVE-2022-51021 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.2) SQL Injection vulnerability. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
NotificationX plugin for WordPress 2.0.0 before 2.3.12 contains an unauthenticated SQL injection vulnerability that allows remote attackers to manipulate database queries by supplying…
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-51021.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-51021 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
NotificationX plugin for WordPress 2.0.0 before 2.3.12 contains an unauthenticated SQL injection vulnerability that allows remote attackers to manipulate database queries by supplying an array-form 'id' parameter to /wp-json/notificationx/v1/notification/{id}. Attackers can pass id[1] with crafted SQL, such as time-based SLEEP payloads, along with an api_key derived from md5(home_url()), which flows unsanitized into Database::get_where_query to extract database contents. Exploitation evidence was first observed by the Shadowserver Foundation on 2023-10-18.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2022-51021 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Until you can upgrade, make sure every query built from user input uses parameterised statements or a prepared-statement API rather than string concatenation, and reduce the database account's privileges so an injected query cannot read or alter data beyond what the feature needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-51021 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.