What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-16144: Kali Forms <= 2.4.20 - Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution via 'thisPermalink' Field Parameter

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-08-01 · updated 2026-08-12
• Weakness: CWE-94

Description

The Kali Forms — Contact Form & Drag-and-Drop Builder plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in all versions up to, and including, 2.4.20 via the _save_data function. This is due to insufficient validation of the 'thisPermalink' field value before it overwrites a trusted callable placeholder, allowing attacker-controlled strings to reach call_user_func() in _save_data(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute code on the server. Exploitation requires the target form to define a field with a name matching one of the reserved placeholder keys ('thisPermalink', 'entryCounter', or 'submission_link'), as check_if_placeholders_changed() only processes POST keys present in the form's field_type_map.

Affected products

• wpchill Kali Forms — Contact Form & Drag-and-Drop Builder: through 2.4.20

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.19/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L1033
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.19/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L172
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.19/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L277
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.19/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L90
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.19/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L976
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.20/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L1033
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.20/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L172
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.20/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L277
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.20/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L90
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/kali-forms/tags/2.4.20/Inc/Frontend/class-form-processor.php#L976
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&old=3623024%40kali-forms&new=3623024%40kali-forms
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/9d692aff-8bb2-45bb-9caf-bc33d3ed5b10?source=cve

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