CVE-2019-9978 — WordPress Social Warfare Plugin Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability

The social-warfare plugin before 3.5.3 for WordPress has stored XSS via the wp-admin/admin-post.php?swp_debug=load_options swp_url parameter, as exploited in the wild in March 2019. This affects Social Warfare and Social Warfare Pro.

01What is this vulnerability?

The social-warfare plugin before 3.5.3 for WordPress has stored XSS via the wp-admin/admin-post.php?swp_debug=load_options swp_url parameter, as exploited in the wild in March 2019. This affects Social Warfare and Social Warfare Pro.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Yes — actively exploited. Added to the CISA KEV catalog on 2021-11-03. Ransomware use: Unknown.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Open the Sigma generator with a pre-filled prompt for this CVE to draft a starting detection in your stack of choice:

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07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2019-03-24T14:47:26.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-10-21T23:45:41.750Z
• Added to CISA KEV: 2021-11-03
• BOD 22-01 due: 2022-05-03

09References

• wpvulndb.com — https://wpvulndb.com/vulnerabilities/9238
• www.cybersecurity-help.cz — https://www.cybersecurity-help.cz/vdb/SB2019032105
• blog.sucuri.net — https://blog.sucuri.net/2019/03/zero-day-stored-xss-in-social-warfare.html
• www.wordfence.com — https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2019/03/unpatched-zero-day-vulnerability-in-socia…
• www.pluginvulnerabilities.com — https://www.pluginvulnerabilities.com/2019/03/21/full-disclosure-of-settings-cha…
• wordpress.org — https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-warfare/#developers
• twitter.com — https://twitter.com/warfareplugins/status/1108852747099652099
• www.exploit-db.com — https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/46794/
• packetstormsecurity.com — http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/152722/Wordpress-Social-Warfare-Remote-Code…
• packetstormsecurity.com — http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/163680/WordPress-Social-Warfare-3.5.2-Remot…