CVE-2026-10821: Yoast SEO Premium < 27.6.1 - Author+ Arbitrary .htaccess Directive Injection to RCE

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-10821 is a high (CVSS 8.8) Injection vulnerability in unknown yoast seo premium. EPSS estimates a 0.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 42.7% of scored vulnerabilities. 1 public exploit is recorded. Fixed in 27.6.1.

Timeline

1. 02-09-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 02-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

The Yoast SEO Premium WordPress plugin before 27.6.1 does not sanitize control characters from redirect origins before writing them to the site's Apache configuration file when the file-based redirect mode is enabled, and the redirect-creation endpoint is reachable by users with only Author-level access. This allows such users to inject arbitrary newline-delimited Apache directives into the root .htaccess file. On Apache servers that honour PHP directives, the injection can be chained with the user's own media upload (a polyglot image carrying a PHP payload) and an auto_prepend_file directive to achieve Remote Code Execution.

• CWE-74Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection')The product constructs all or part of a command, data structure, or record using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify how it is parsed or interpreted when it is sent to a downstream component.
• CWE-94Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')The product constructs all or part of a code segment using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the syntax or behavior of the intended code segment.