# Brave Popup Builder <= 0.8.8 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary Shortcode Execution via Quiz Score Data

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-1916
- **Plugin:** Brave – Create Popup, Optins, Lead Generation, Survey, Sticky Elements & Interactive Content (`brave-popup-builder`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/brave-popup-builder/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 0.8.9
- **Fixed in:** 0.8.9 (Update to 0.8.9 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 4.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-94
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Medium, affected versions Medium (as of 2026-10-29)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/brave-popup-builder
- **Fix released:** 2026-10-28
- **Published:** 2026-10-29
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-1916/

## Description

The Brave plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary shortcode execution via the 'quizData' parameter of the bravepop_form_submission AJAX action in all versions up to, and including, 0.8.8. This is due to the plugin taking the quiz result (userScore, userCorrect, availableScore, totalQuestions, scoring) from the client-supplied request without validation. It substitutes these values into the form's e-mail, success-message and redirect templates, which are then passed to do_shortcode(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shortcodes and to forge quiz results. The attack works on any site that shows a Brave form whose message, e-mail or redirect template uses a quiz placeholder such as [total_score] or [brave_quizcondition].

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-1916/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/brave-popup-builder/tags/0.8.9/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/brave-popup-builder/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-1916/

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.