What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-18051: W3 Total Cache < 2.10.5 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary Directory File Write and .htaccess Overwrite via Path Traversal in the Page Cache Key
- Severity: critical (CVSS 10.0 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2026-08-19 · updated 2026-08-26
- Weakness: CWE-22
Description
The W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin before 2.10.5 does not properly validate the request path it uses to build cache file names, allowing unauthenticated attackers to write a file into any existing directory on the server, inside or outside the web root, overwriting whatever occupies the target name. On Apache, the same flaw overwrites the site's .htaccess files, which breaks the site and can strip hardening rules that other security measures rely on.
Affected products
- W3 Total Cache: before 2.10.5 — fixed in 2.10.5
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: W3 Total Cache 2.10.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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