CVE-2016-2221

Severity: high (CVSS 7.4 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 4.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-05-22 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

Open redirect vulnerability in the wp_validate_redirect function in wp-includes/pluggable.php in WordPress before 4.4.2 allows remote attackers to redirect users to arbitrary web sites and conduct phishing attacks via a malformed URL that triggers incorrect hostname parsing, as demonstrated by an https:example.com URL.

Affected products

WordPress: through 4.4.1

References

http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3472
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/82463
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1034933
https://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.4.2
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/36444
https://wordpress.org/news/2016/02/wordpress-4-4-2-security-and-maintenance-release/
https://wpvulndb.com/vulnerabilities/8377
http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3472
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/82463
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1034933
https://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.4.2
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/36444

Get alerted when CVE-2016-2221 or the next vulnerability affects your stack