Description

A medium-severity vulnerability (CVE-2025-11241) has been discovered in Yoast SEO Premium versions 25.7 through 25.9, potentially affecting millions of WordPress websites. With a CVSS score of 6.4, the flaw stems from a flawed regular expression used to remove attributes in post content. This issue allows authenticated users with at least Contributor-level access to inject malicious JavaScript into posts. When viewed by site administrators or visitors, this injected code can execute in their browsers, leading to potential data theft, privilege escalation, or further attacks. The vulnerability is categorized as stored cross-site scripting (XSS) and is specifically dangerous in multi-author environments where users with limited permissions can publish content. While the flaw cannot be exploited by unauthenticated users, it remains a significant risk for websites that permit content submissions from various user roles. The vulnerability is particularly tied to Yoast's AI feature, which inadvertently enabled a bypass of input sanitization, letting attackers embed harmful JavaScript through HTML attributes. Yoast has responded swiftly by releasing version 26.0, which patches the vulnerability and includes additional usability improvements. According to the changelog, the update addresses the XSS flaw by tightening security checks for users with the edit_posts capability. Other fixes include resolving issues with redirect removals, correcting tooltip behavior in RTL languages, and improving filter persistence on the redirects page. Importantly, Yoast has raised the minimum required plugin version to 26.0, encouraging users to upgrade immediately to maintain security and functionality. Website administrators are urged to update without delay to protect their sites from potential compromise.