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CVE-2016-6896

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 38.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2017-01-18 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Directory traversal vulnerability in the wp_ajax_update_plugin function in wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php in WordPress 4.5.3 allows remote authenticated users to cause a denial of service or read certain text files via a .. (dot dot) in the plugin parameter to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php, as demonstrated by /dev/random read operations that deplete the entropy pool.

Affected products

• WordPress: 4.5.3

References

• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/20/1
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1036683
• https://sumofpwn.nl/advisory/2016/path_traversal_vulnerability_in_wordpress_core_ajax_handlers.html
• https://wpvulndb.com/vulnerabilities/8606
• https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/40288/
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/08/20/1
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1036683
• https://sumofpwn.nl/advisory/2016/path_traversal_vulnerability_in_wordpress_core_ajax_handlers.html
• https://wpvulndb.com/vulnerabilities/8606
• https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/40288/

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