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Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2019-8942 in the critical feed json

WordPress before 4.9.9 and 5.x before 5.0.1 allows remote code execution because an _wp_attached_file Post Meta entry can be changed to an…

published 7y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2019-18329

cvss
8.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
82.7%
EPSS 82.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.6%
public exploits
3
Metasploit and Exploit-DB

Summary

WordPress before 4.9.9 and 5.x before 5.0.1 allows remote code execution because an _wp_attached_file Post Meta entry can be changed to an arbitrary string, such as one ending with a .jpg?file.php substring. An attacker with author privileges can execute arbitrary code by uploading a crafted image containing PHP code in the Exif metadata. Exploitation can leverage CVE-2019-8943.

Patch / fix

  • wordpress wordpress 4.9.9
  • wordpress Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.0.1+dfsg1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2019-8942

  • wordpress Arch Linux 5.0.1-1

arch linux advisories AVG-910

Is CVE-2019-8942 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2019-8942 updated cvss 7.2

wordpress: Author users can execute arbitrary code by leveraging path traversal

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (Metasploit exploit/multi/http/wp_crop_rce)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

82.74% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.6% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • Metasploit exploit/multi/http/wp_crop_rce WordPress Crop-image Shell Upload metasploit exploit, excellent rank, 2019-02-19
  • EDB-46662 WordPress Core 5.0.0 - Crop-image Shell Upload (Metasploit) remote, 2019-04-05
  • EDB-46511 WordPress Core 5.0 - Remote Code Execution webapps, 2019-03-01
  • blog.ripstech.com https://blog.ripstech.com/2019/wordpress-image-remote-code-execution/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • lists.debian.org https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/03/msg00044.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • packetstormsecurity.com http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/152396/WordPress-5.0.0-crop-image-Shell-Upload.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • rapid7.com http://www.rapid7.com/db/modules/exploit/multi/http/wp_crop_rce referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-434 Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.