# ProfilePress – Paid Membership, Online Courses (LMS), Ecommerce, User Registration & Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content <= 4.18.0 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary Shortcode Execution via Member Directory Search Term

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-3089
- **Plugin:** ProfilePress – Paid Membership, Online Courses (LMS), Ecommerce, User Registration & Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content (`wp-user-avatar`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-user-avatar/
- **Affected versions:** from 3.0 before 4.18.1
- **Fixed in:** 4.18.1 (Update to 4.18.1 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 6.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-94
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin High, affected versions High (as of 2026-11-13)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/wp-user-avatar
- **Fix released:** 2026-11-12
- **Published:** 2026-11-13
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3089/

## Description

The Paid Membership, Online Courses (LMS), Ecommerce, User Registration & Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary shortcode execution via the drag-and-drop member directory search term in all versions up to, and including, 4.18.0. This is due to the search term from the 'filter<ID>' query parameter being reflected into the directory's search field, which is HTML-escaped but does not have its shortcode brackets neutralized, before the assembled directory markup is passed through do_shortcode(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shortcodes on the site.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3089/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/wp-user-avatar/tags/4.18.1/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-user-avatar/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3089/

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.