Vulnerability in AI Engine – The Chatbot, AI Framework & MCP for WordPress — CVE-2026-96561
What to do now
Update AI Engine – The Chatbot, AI Framework & MCP for WordPress to 3.8.1 or later.
Affected versions
- Everything up to and including 3.8.0
Affected: AI Engine – The Chatbot, AI Framework & MCP for WordPress (plugin, ai-engine)
What the vulnerability is
The AI Engine – The Chatbot, AI Framework & MCP for WordPress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting in versions up to, and including, 3.8.0 This is due to a chain of missing input neutralization and output escaping across the /mwai-ui/v1/chats/submit REST endpoint, the PHP error-log parser (MeowKit_MWAI_Helpers::php_error_logs), the Advisor task (Meow_MWAI_Modules_Advisor::run_advisor), and the Advisor dashboard widget (advisor_metabox): the server-parameter denylist in chat_submit strips only exact key names such as 'model' while convert_keys() later canonicalizes 'model_' back to 'model', allowing an unauthenticated caller to place an attacker-controlled string (including CR/LF) into $query->model; final_checks() throws an Exception whose message embeds that raw string, and the non-streaming, non-admin catch branch writes it to the PHP error log unmodified — creating a forged log line that the plugin's own parser subsequently returns as recent PHP-error content; run_advisor() then appends that content verbatim to the AI prompt (indirect prompt injection — CWE-1427), the returned JSON is stored in the mwai_advisor_data option with no schema validation or HTML sanitization, and advisor_metabox() concatenates the resulting 'title' and 'description' values directly into the WordPress dashboard widget without esc_html(), wp_kses(), or equivalent escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever an administrator accesses the WordPress dashboard.