CVE-2023-5137VulnerabilityPublished 4 Dec 2023Updated 29 May 2025

CVE-2023-5137: Simply Excerpts (WordPress plugin) · Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Affects Simply Excerpts (WordPress plugin)Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.8 Medium.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.8Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 36% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: Low
Integrity: Low
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 4 Dec 2023
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-25.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Unknown Simply Excerpts	Affected =0	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate this vulnerability, European organizations should immediately update the Simply Excerpts plugin to a version where this issue is fixed once available. Until a patch is released, administrators should restrict plugin access strictly to trusted users and consider disabling or removing the plugin if it is not essential. Implementing strict role-based access controls (RBAC) to limit the number of users with high privileges reduces the risk of exploitation. Additionally, organizations should monitor administrative activity logs for unusual behavior and employ Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with custom rules to detect and block suspicious script injections targeting plugin settings pages. Regular security audits and vulnerability scanning of WordPress plugins should be conducted to identify similar issues proactively. Educating administrators about the risks of injecting untrusted content into plugin settings and enforcing strong authentication mechanisms (e.g., multi-factor authentication) will further reduce the attack surface.

Description

The Simply Excerpts WordPress plugin through 1.4 does not sanitize and escape some fields in the plugin settings, which could allow high-privilege users such as an administrator to inject arbitrary web scripts even when the unfiltered_html capability is disallowed (for example in a multisite setup).

Impact

For European organizations using WordPress with the Simply Excerpts plugin, this vulnerability poses a moderate risk primarily to site administrators and users with elevated privileges. Successful exploitation could allow attackers to execute arbitrary scripts within the administrative interface, potentially leading to theft of sensitive information such as authentication tokens or cookies, unauthorized changes to site content or configurations, and facilitation of further attacks like phishing or malware distribution. In multisite WordPress deployments common in larger organizations or hosting providers, the risk is heightened because the vulnerability bypasses the usual 'unfiltered_html' restrictions, increasing the attack surface. While the vulnerability does not directly impact availability, the compromise of administrative accounts or site integrity could disrupt business operations, damage reputation, and lead to regulatory compliance issues under GDPR if personal data is exposed or manipulated. The medium severity score suggests that while the threat is not critical, it should be addressed promptly to prevent exploitation, especially in environments with multiple administrators or complex site configurations.

CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #1OWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages.
Architecture and Design · Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch (opens in a new tab)
DOM-Based XSS (opens in a new tab)
Reflected XSS (opens in a new tab)
Stored XSS (opens in a new tab)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

wpscan.com/vulnerability/79b79e9c-ea4f-4188-a1b5-61dda0b5d434 (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 8 Jul 2025, 03:00 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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