CVE-2023-6530VulnerabilityPublished 29 Jan 2024Updated 29 May 2025

CVE-2023-6530: TJ Shortcodes (WordPress plugin) · Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Affects TJ Shortcodes (WordPress plugin)Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.4 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 06:26 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.4Medium

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

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 34% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
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: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
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 29 Jan 2024
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 2026-10-26.

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 TJ Shortcodes	Affected =0	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2023-6530, European organizations should take the following specific actions: 1) Immediately audit WordPress installations to identify the presence of the TJ Shortcodes plugin and confirm the version in use. 2) Restrict contributor-level permissions to trusted users only, minimizing the risk of malicious content submission. 3) Implement a content review and moderation workflow that includes scanning for suspicious scripts or unusual shortcode usage before publishing. 4) Apply manual or automated input validation and output escaping for shortcode attributes if custom development is involved, ensuring that all user-supplied data is sanitized before rendering. 5) Monitor WordPress security advisories and update the plugin promptly once a patch or secure version is released. 6) Employ Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with rules designed to detect and block common XSS payloads targeting shortcode parameters. 7) Educate content contributors about the risks of injecting untrusted code and enforce strict content policies. 8) Conduct regular security testing, including penetration testing focused on stored XSS vectors within WordPress environments. These measures go beyond generic advice by focusing on access control, content moderation, and proactive detection tailored to the shortcode context.

Description

The TJ Shortcodes WordPress plugin through 0.1.3 does not validate and escape some of its shortcode attributes before outputting them back in a page/post where the shortcode is embed, which could allow users with the contributor role and above to perform Stored Cross-Site Scripting attacks.

Impact

For European organizations using WordPress sites with the TJ Shortcodes plugin, this vulnerability poses a risk primarily to multi-user environments such as corporate blogs, intranets, or community portals where contributor roles are assigned. An attacker with contributor access could inject malicious scripts that execute in the browsers of site visitors or administrators, potentially leading to session hijacking, theft of sensitive information, or unauthorized actions performed on behalf of legitimate users. While the direct impact on server confidentiality and availability is limited, the indirect consequences could include reputational damage, data leakage, and compliance violations under GDPR if personal data is compromised. Organizations relying on WordPress for customer-facing or internal communication should be aware that even medium-severity XSS vulnerabilities can be leveraged in targeted attacks or combined with social engineering to escalate impact. The requirement for contributor-level access reduces the likelihood of random exploitation but does not eliminate risk in environments with many users or weak access controls. Additionally, stored XSS vulnerabilities can be persistent and harder to detect, increasing the window of exposure. European organizations with regulatory obligations to protect user data must consider the potential for cross-site scripting to facilitate data breaches or unauthorized data access.

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

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 7 Jul 2025, 23:28 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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