Executive brief
The AI Engine plugin for WordPress, which provides chatbot and AI framework capabilities, is vulnerable to a security flaw that allows attackers to take over a website. By tricking a site administrator into clicking a malicious link, an attacker can bypass authentication and create a new administrator account for themselves. This gives the attacker full control over the website, potentially leading to data theft, site defacement, or complete service disruption.
Technical details
The AI Engine plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the 'reauth_for_authorize' function in versions up to and including 3.6.5. This vulnerability allows unauthenticated attackers to bypass REST authentication. By leveraging WordPress's '?_method=POST' method-override support, an attacker can convert a GET request (triggered via social engineering, such as a link click by an administrator) into an authenticated POST request to the REST users endpoint. This enables the creation of a new administrator account with attacker-supplied credentials. The issue is addressed in version 3.6.6.
Affected products
- tigroumeow AI Engine – The Chatbot, AI Framework & MCP for WordPress <= 3.6.5
Timeline
- 2026-08-01: advisory: NVD publication date
- 2026-08-01: disclosed: Wordfence disclosure date
References
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ai-engine/tags/3.6.2/labs/mcp-oauth.php
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ai-engine/tags/3.6.2/labs/mcp-oauth.php
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ai-engine/tags/3.6.2/labs/mcp-oauth.php
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ai-engine/tags/3.6.2/labs/mcp-oauth.php
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3628188/ai-engine/trunk/labs/mcp-oauth.php
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?old_path=%2Fai-engine/tags/3.6.5&new_path=%2Fai-engine/tags/3.6.6
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/45816c45-42bc-4163-b700-a1e913f32c97?source=cve