# GeoDirectory – WP Business Directory Plugin and Classified Listings Directory <= 2.8.203 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Missing Authorization to HTML Injection via Category Description Fields on Listing Tags

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-3042
- **Plugin:** GeoDirectory – WP Business Directory Plugin and Classified Listings Directory (`geodirectory`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/geodirectory/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 2.8.204
- **Fixed in:** 2.8.204 (Update to 2.8.204 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 4.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-862
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Low, affected versions Low (as of 2026-11-13)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/geodirectory
- **Fix released:** 2026-11-12
- **Published:** 2026-11-13
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3042/

## Description

The GeoDirectory plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification of data via the category description fields (ct_cat_top_desc, ct_cat_bottom_desc and other category fields) in all versions up to, and including, 2.8.203, due to the save_category_fields() function storing these fields from the request whenever a term is created, with no taxonomy, capability or nonce check. The function can be registered on a front-end listing submission by adding a GeoDirectory category taxonomy to the request. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above (and unauthenticated attackers when guest listing submission is enabled), to attach category descriptions to the tags they create with a listing and inject HTML content that is shown on those tags' archive pages. In releases before 2.8.183 the descriptions were stored without HTML filtering, which also allowed script injection.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3042/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/geodirectory/tags/2.8.204/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/geodirectory/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3042/

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.