---
id: CVE-2026-116522
title: >-
  Relevanssi <= 4.28.5 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Comment
  Content via Late Entity Decode
summary: >-
  The Relevanssi – A Better Search plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored
  Cross-Site Scripting via the 'comment' parameter in all versions up to, and
  including, 4.28.5 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping.
  This …
severity: high
cvss: 7.2
cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N'
cvssSource: cna
cwe:
  - CWE-79
vendor: comesio
product: Relevanssi – A Better Search
affected:
  - relevanssi_a_better_search <= 4.28.5
ssvc:
  exploitation: none
  automatable: 'no'
  technicalImpact: partial
  timestamp: '2026-11-01T17:34:45.610719Z'
published: '2026-10-31'
updated: '2026-11-01'
sourceUpdated: '2026-11-01T17:44:29.607Z'
source: CVEORG
sourceUrl: 'https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-116522'
references:
  - url: >-
      https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/442403ae-9011-4373-a363-e98e07ec7e9b?source=cve
  - url: >-
      https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L521
  - url: >-
      https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L688
  - url: >-
      https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/excerpts-highlights.php#L1698
  - url: >-
      https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/init.php#L140
  - url: >-
      https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.28.5/lib/common.php#L1037
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/msaari/relevanssi/commit/b0324957b27e2dfc2aa116c96dcf578fbec9e0e5
  - url: >-
      https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&new=3767703%40relevanssi%2Ftags%2F4.28.6&old=3761637%40relevanssi%2Ftags%2F4.28.5
tags:
  - cve.org
epss: 0.00247
epssPercentile: 0.16085
ingestedAt: '2026-11-05T19:30:42.599Z'
---

## Overview

The Relevanssi – A Better Search plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the 'comment' parameter in all versions up to, and including, 4.28.5 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. This requires the site to have both the comment indexing and comment highlighting options enabled, and the payload only fires when a visitor reaches a singular page via a Relevanssi search-result permalink carrying the highlight query parameter.

## Affected

- `relevanssi_a_better_search <= 4.28.5`

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.