WordPress users beware experts claim sites are being hijacked using a critical flaw in popular Everest Forms Pro plugin

Date:
Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:20:00 +0000

Description:
A popular WordPress plugin is once again being leveraged in website takeover attacks.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Critical RCE flaw in Everest Forms Pro (CVE20263300) actively exploited Attackers create rogue admin account diksimarina via PHP injection Nearly 30,000 takeover attempts
blocked; admins urged to patch and block key IPs Security researchers are warning of an ongoing hacking campaign targeting certain WordPress websites using a popular plugin tool.

Wordfence has claimed Everest Forms Pro, a popular WordPress plugin , was allegedly being used to create contract, registration, payment, and other application forms, carried a critical-severity vulnerability that allowed malicious actors to take over the sites entirely. The bug was described as a Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw via PHP code injection. It is tracked as CVE-2026-3300 and was given the severity rating of 9.8/10 (critical). It affects all versions of the plugin up to, and including, 1.9.12. Latest
Videos From Watch full video here: Patched months ago Wordfence is now
warning that the flaw is being actively abused in the wild to create
malicious admin accounts on vulnerable websites:

The attacker submits a value for a text field that begins with a single quote to close the wrapping string literal, followed by a PHP statement that calls wp_insert_user() to create a new administrator account with the username 'diksimarina, Wordfence warned in its report. You may like 60,000 WordPress sites at risk due to plugin security flaw WP Maps Pro plugin flaw to create admin accounts on WordPress sites saw 3,600 attempts in a single day Over a million WordPress sites hit in plugin flaw so patch now or face the consequences

The trailing // comment marker ensures the rest of the generated PHP code, including the closing quote, is treated as a comment and does not cause a syntax error. When the form is processed, and the calculation is evaluated, the injected PHP code is executed, and the malicious administrator account is created.

By creating an admin account, malicious actors can do almost anything with
the website, including exfiltrating stored files, redirecting visitors, or even serving malware. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
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The bug was first disclosed in February this year, and by mid-March, the Everest Forms developer released a fix. Wordfence says that exploitation attempts started roughly a month later, in mid-April. So far, it thwarted almost 30,000 attempts, most of which came from two IP addresses.

Admins worried about being potential targets should block the two IP
addresses 202.56.2[.]126 and 209.146.60.26, and should review log files for the string diksimarina.

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