What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-28039

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 4.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-11-02 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

is_protected_meta in wp-includes/meta.php in WordPress before 5.5.2 allows arbitrary file deletion because it does not properly determine whether a meta key is considered protected.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 16.04, 18.04, 20.04
• Debian Linux: 9.0, 10.0
• WordPress: before 5.5.2 — fixed in 5.5.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: WordPress 5.5.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/commit/d5ddd6d4be1bc9fd16b7796842e6fb26315705ad
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/11/msg00004.html
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/CHHVNK2WYAM3ZTCXTFSEIT56IKLVJHU3/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VAVVYJKA2I6CRQUINECDPBGWMQDEG244/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VUXVUAKL2HL4QYJEPHBNVQQWRMFMII2Y/
• https://wordpress.org/news/2020/10/wordpress-5-5-2-security-and-maintenance-release/
• https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/10452
• https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4784
• https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/commit/d5ddd6d4be1bc9fd16b7796842e6fb26315705ad
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/11/msg00004.html
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/CHHVNK2WYAM3ZTCXTFSEIT56IKLVJHU3/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VAVVYJKA2I6CRQUINECDPBGWMQDEG244/

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