Better Messages <= 2.15.33 - Unauthenticated Information Exposure Spoofing via 'X-Real-IP' Header via /guests/register

Summary

The Better Messages – Chat Rooms, Group Chat, Private Messages & AI Chat Bots plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Information Exposure by Spoofing in all versions up to, and including, 2.15.33. This is due to the `is_ai_bot_user()` function identifying privileged internal AI bot accounts by performing a prefix check for `'ai-chat-bot-'` against a guest record's stored IP address, which is populated verbatim from the client-controlled `X-Real-IP` request header during unauthenticated guest registration. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to register a guest identity that the plugin treats as its own internal AI bot, bypassing the per-room role allowlist, draft-status check, and join filters — which are all short-circuited by the bot check in `user_can_join()` and `user_can_read()` — to join administrator-restricted chat rooms, post messages into them, and read the private message history of other users.

Timeline

1. Sep 19, 2026, 2:27 AM UTCCVE published
2. Sep 19, 2026, 1:21 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

3. Sep 19, 2026, 2:01 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• wordplus Better Messages – Chat Rooms, Group Chat, Private Messages & AI Chat Bots

  through 2.15.33

References 9