# Link Whisper Free <= 0.9.7 - Authenticated (Editor+) SQL Injection via 'orderby' and 'post_id' Parameters

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-0865
- **Plugin:** Link Whisper Free (`link-whisper`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/link-whisper/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 0.9.8
- **Fixed in:** 0.9.8 (Update to 0.9.8 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 4.9 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-89
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Medium, affected versions Medium (as of 2026-10-13)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/link-whisper
- **Fix released:** 2026-10-13
- **Published:** 2026-10-14
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0865/

## Description

The Link Whisper Free plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection via the Clicks Report 'orderby' parameter and the Click Details page 'post_id' parameter (when 'post_type' is 'url') in all versions up to, and including, 0.9.7. This is due to insufficient escaping of user-supplied values and insufficient preparation of the existing SQL queries: the orderby value only goes through sanitize_text_field() before it is placed in the ORDER BY clause, and the URL value goes through esc_url_raw(), which keeps single quotes, before it is placed in a quoted string. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with access to the Link Whisper reports (Editor-level access and above by default) to append additional SQL queries to existing queries and extract sensitive information from the database.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0865/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/link-whisper/tags/0.9.8/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/link-whisper/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-0865/

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.