Case Study: How We Mitigated a WooCommerce Plugin XSS Exploit
WordPress and WooCommerce power thousands of online stores. But when a popular plugin contained an XSS vulnerability, it left customer sessions and data exposed. Here's how we discovered and fixed the issue before attackers could act.
During a security audit of an eCommerce store, our team found a persistent XSS vulnerability in a third-party WooCommerce plugin used to manage product reviews.
The issue stemmed from unvalidated user input being stored and rendered on the product page, allowing JavaScript execution in other users’ browsers.
Security Fixes We Implemented:
- Escaped and sanitized all user inputs before rendering in HTML
- Patched the plugin code to follow OWASP XSS prevention guidelines
- Reported the flaw to the plugin developer who rolled out a public fix
Attackers could have hijacked user sessions, injected phishing popups, or redirected users to malicious domains. Over 25,000 websites were using this plugin at the time of discovery.
Always vet third-party plugins, run periodic vulnerability scans, and enforce Content Security Policies (CSP) to reduce impact of client-side attacks.