GoKawiilHackers are attempting to exploit two critical authentication bypass vulnerabilities in the miniOrange SAML 2.0 Single Sign On plugin for WordPress that can be used to forge SAML responses and log in as administrators.
The miniOrange SAML SSO plugin turns a WordPress site into a SAML service provider, letting users log in through corporate identity platforms such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace, or OneLogin instead of separate WordPress credentials.
Created by Xecurify, miniOrange is a family of seven plugins, with a free version that has 10,000 downloads and 30,000 customers for the other six.
The two vulnerabilities observed in exploitation attempts are tracked as CVE-2026-61979 and CVE-2026-15981 and can be chained together to bypass authentication.
Because the miniOrange SAML SSO plugin accepts the signature algorithm from incoming SAML responses instead of enforcing the configured one, an attacker can leverage CVE-2026-61979 to select HMAC-SHA1. This causes the plugin to treat the RSA public key from the identity provider (IdP) as the shared secret.
Since the public key is known, the attacker can forge a signature that the plugin accepts as authentic.
The second security issue, CVE-2026-15981, causes the plugin to treat an OpenSSL verification error (-1) as a successful result, allowing malformed signatures to pass validation.
According to security firm Patchstack, the two vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed and fixed in July. However, the vendor’s advisory covered only the free edition, leaving the six paid editions without an alert, even though fixes were provided for those too.
The following versions addressed the two flaws:
Free, single site – 5.4.5 Premium, single site – 13.0.4 Standard, single site – 17.06 Premium/Enterprise/All-Inclusive, multisite – 20.2.8 Enterprise/All-Inclusive, single site – 26.0.3 VIP, single site – 32.0.8 VIP, multisite – 35.0.7
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