CVE-2025-8902: 
WordPress vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-8902 affects the Widget Options - Extended plugin for WordPress versions up to and including 5.2.1. The vulnerability was discovered and disclosed on September 23, 2025. This security issue involves a Stored Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability in the plugin's 'do_sidebar' shortcode functionality, which affects WordPress installations using the vulnerable plugin versions (NVD).

The vulnerability stems from insufficient input sanitization and output escaping on user-supplied attributes in the 'do_sidebar' shortcode functionality. The issue has been assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 6.4 (Medium) with the vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N. The vulnerability is classified as CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (NVD).

When exploited, this vulnerability allows authenticated attackers with contributor-level access or higher to inject arbitrary web scripts into pages. These malicious scripts will execute whenever a user accesses the compromised page, potentially leading to unauthorized data access or manipulation of user sessions (NVD).

The vulnerability has been patched in version 5.2.2 released on September 8, 2025. The update includes improved input sanitization to address the Cross-site Scripting vulnerability. Users are advised to update to version 5.2.2 or later to protect against this security issue (Widget Changelog).