CVE-2026-13040 — WordPress
HIGHCVE-2026-13040 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.2) Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
The NEX-Forms – Ultimate Forms Plugin for WordPress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the 'real_val__' parameter in all versions up to, and including,…
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-2026-13040.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-13040 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 380,526 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
The NEX-Forms – Ultimate Forms Plugin for WordPress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the 'real_val__' parameter in all versions up to, and including, 9.2.2 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. The submission endpoint is registered via wp_ajax_nopriv_submit_nex_form with no nonce verification, making it fully accessible to unauthenticated attackers without any CSRF token.
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-2026-13040 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Escape or sanitise the affected output on the server side rather than relying on client-side filtering, and add a Content-Security-Policy that blocks inline script execution so injected markup cannot run even if it reaches the page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-13040 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.