CVE-2026-2712: Davidanderson Wp-Optimize – Cache, Compress Images, Minify & Clean Database To Boost Page Speed & Performance

Medium severity, CVSS 5.4. EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The WP-Optimize plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized access of functionality due to missing capability checks in the `receive_heartbeat()` function in `includes/class-wp-optimize-heartbeat.php` in all versions up to, and including, 4.5.0. This is due to the Heartbeat handler directly invoking `Updraft_Smush_Manager_Commands` methods without verifying user capabilities, nonce tokens, or the allowed commands whitelist that the normal AJAX handler (`updraft_smush_ajax`) enforces. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to invoke admin-only Smush operations including reading log files (`get_smush_logs`), deleting all backup images (`clean_all_backup_images`), triggering bulk image processing (`process_bulk_smush`), and modifying Smush options (`update_smush_options`).

Affected products

• Davidanderson Wp-Optimize – Cache, Compress Images, Minify & Clean Database To Boost Page Speed & Performance: up to and including 4.5.0

Published 2026-04-10. Last modified 2026-06-17.