WordPress Core < 2.6.2 — Arbitrary User Password Reset

Am I affected?

• Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under WordPress.
• No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.
• No account is needed to exploit this. Treat any exposed site on an affected version as at risk.

What to do

1. Update to version 2.6.2, or a newer patched version
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch WordPress to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Stefan Esser.

WordPress before 2.6.2 does not properly handle MySQL warnings about insertion of username strings that exceed the maximum column width of the user_login column, and does not properly handle space characters when comparing usernames, which allows remote attackers to change an arbitrary user's password to a random value by registering a similar username and then requesting a password reset, related to a "SQL column truncation vulnerability." NOTE: the attacker can discover the random password by also exploiting CVE-2008-4107.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

No public proof-of-concept or detection template is known for this vulnerability.

Advisories & patches

• Advisorywordfence.com

Timeline

1. Sep 8, 2008

   CVE published

   Severity high, CVSS 8.1

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated