# AI Engine <= 3.8.3 - Missing Authorization to Unauthenticated AI Search and Limited Information Exposure via 'search' REST Endpoint

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-0698
- **Plugin:** AI Engine – The Chatbot, AI Framework & MCP for WordPress (`ai-engine`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/ai-engine/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 3.8.4
- **Fixed in:** 3.8.4 (Update to 3.8.4 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 6.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L)
- **Weakness:** CWE-862
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Low, affected versions Low (as of 2026-10-10)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/ai-engine
- **Fix released:** 2026-10-08
- **Published:** 2026-10-10
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0698/

## Description

The AI Engine plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized access via the mwai-ui/v1/search REST API endpoint in all versions up to, and including, 3.8.3, due to the route being registered with a permission callback that always returns true. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers, on sites with the Search module enabled, to run AI keyword-generation queries and, where Knowledge is available, embeddings searches against any Knowledge environment using the site's AI provider API keys, consuming the site owner's credits, and to read back the titles of Knowledge entries that are not published posts.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0698/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/ai-engine/tags/3.8.4/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/ai-engine/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0698/

License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Free to use, share and adapt, also commercially, if you credit WPSec and link to this advisory.