Citation Importer Security & Risk Analysis

wordpress.org/plugins/citation-importer

Import a citation or bibliography as posts.

20 active installs v0.6 PHP + WP 3.0+ Updated Aug 19, 2016
academicbibliographycitationscrossrefdoi
85
A · Safe
CVEs total0
Unpatched0
Last CVENever
Safety Verdict

Is Citation Importer Safe to Use in 2026?

Generally Safe

Score 85/100

Citation Importer has no known CVEs and is actively maintained. It's a solid choice for most WordPress installations.

No known CVEs Updated 9yr ago
Risk Assessment

The "citation-importer" v0.6 plugin exhibits a generally strong security posture based on the provided static analysis. The absence of an attack surface, dangerous functions, raw SQL queries, and file operations is highly commendable and indicates good development practices. The presence of nonce and capability checks also suggests an awareness of security fundamentals.

However, a significant concern arises from the taint analysis, which reveals three flows with unsanitized paths. While no critical or high severity issues were found, these unsanitized paths represent a potential avenue for unexpected behavior or data manipulation if an attacker can influence the input leading to these flows. Furthermore, the output escaping is only at 59%, meaning a notable portion of outputs are not properly sanitized, potentially leading to cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities if the data originates from untrusted sources.

The plugin's vulnerability history is clean, with no recorded CVEs. This, combined with the static analysis findings, suggests that the current version is likely quite stable. Despite the positive aspects, the unsanitized paths and the moderate output escaping are points that warrant attention for future development to further harden the plugin's security.

Key Concerns

  • Flows with unsanitized paths
  • Output escaping below 60%
Vulnerabilities
None known

Citation Importer Security Vulnerabilities

No known vulnerabilities — this is a good sign.
Code Analysis
Analyzed Mar 16, 2026

Citation Importer Code Analysis

Dangerous Functions
0
Raw SQL Queries
0
0 prepared
Unescaped Output
15
22 escaped
Nonce Checks
2
Capability Checks
2
File Operations
0
External Requests
2
Bundled Libraries
0

Output Escaping

59% escaped37 total outputs
Data Flows
3 unsanitized

Data Flow Analysis

3 flows3 with unsanitized paths
lookup (citation-importer.php:98)
Source (user input) Sink (dangerous op) Sanitizer Transform Unsanitized Sanitized
Attack Surface

Citation Importer Attack Surface

Entry Points0
Unprotected0
WordPress Hooks 2
actionadmin_head-admin.phpcitation-importer.php:457
filtercitation_importer_fielddatasample-filters.php:5
Maintenance & Trust

Citation Importer Maintenance & Trust

Maintenance Signals

WordPress version tested4.6.30
Last updatedAug 19, 2016
PHP min version
Downloads2K

Community Trust

Rating0/100
Number of ratings0
Active installs20
Developer Profile

Citation Importer Developer Profile

Stephanie Leary

16 plugins · 17K total installs

68
trust score
Avg Security Score
84/100
Avg Patch Time
2856 days
View full developer profile
Detection Fingerprints

How We Detect Citation Importer

Patterns used to identify this plugin on WordPress sites during automated security audits and web crawling.

Asset Fingerprints

Asset Paths
/wp-content/plugins/citation-importer/css/citation-importer.css/wp-content/plugins/citation-importer/js/citation-importer.js
Script Paths
/wp-content/plugins/citation-importer/js/citation-importer.js
Version Parameters
citation-importer/css/citation-importer.css?ver=citation-importer/js/citation-importer.js?ver=

HTML / DOM Fingerprints

CSS Classes
citation-importer
HTML Comments
<!-- Importer Class -->
Data Attributes
data-search_id
JS Globals
citation_importer_progress
FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about Citation Importer