Vulnerability in Password Protected — Lock Entire Site, Pages, Posts, Categories, and Partial Content — CVE-2026-93293
What to do now
Update Password Protected — Lock Entire Site, Pages, Posts, Categories, and Partial Content to 2.8.5 or later.
Affected versions
- Everything up to and including 2.8.4
Affected: Password Protected — Lock Entire Site, Pages, Posts, Categories, and Partial Content (plugin, password-protected)
What the vulnerability is
The Password Protected plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the bundled Freemius SDK's purchase-completion handler in all versions up to, and including, 2.8.4 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. Once the site's Freemius opt-in is complete (the normal state after an administrator clicks "Allow & Continue"), the handler processes the 'purchased_plan' request parameter on any wp-admin request from an authenticated user without any capability, nonce, or purchase validation, and stores it in a persistent, site-wide administrative notice. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts that execute automatically when an administrator views a standard admin page such as their Profile page.