WordPress wordpress core

WordPress Core < 2.8.4 — Forced Password Reset

CVE-2009-2762Published Aug 12, 2009 · Updated Nov 13, 2026

Affected: ≤2.8.3Update to 2.8.4 or newer

All remediation steps

Watch core

Severity

High7.5

CVSS

7.5

CVSS 3.1 · CNA (Wordfence)

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

What does this vector mean?

AV:N Attack vector: Network
AC:L Attack complexity: Low
PR:N Privileges required: None
UI:N User interaction: None
S:U Scope: Unchanged
C:N Confidentiality: None
I:H Integrity: High
A:N Availability: None

Weakness

CWE-639 Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key

Required access

No account needed

Exploit prediction (EPSS)

No score

CISA KEV

Not listed

On this page7

Am I affected?

WordPress wordpress

Affected≤ 2.8.3
Patched in2.8.4

You are affected if you run ≤ 2.8.3. Version 2.8.4 and later are not affected by this issue.

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

Update to version 2.8.4, or a newer patched version
Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
Watch WordPress to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence.

wp-login.php in WordPress 2.8.3 and earlier allows remote attackers to force a password reset for the first user in the database, possibly the administrator, via a key[] array variable in a resetpass (aka rp) action, which bypasses a check that assumes that $key is not an array.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

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

Advisories & patches

Advisorywordfence.com

Timeline

Aug 12, 2009
CVE published
Severity high, CVSS 7.5
Nov 13, 2026
Record last updated

Sources & licenses

Wordfence record

Vulnerability data: Wordfence Intelligence. [object Object] Licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0.
CVE® identifiers: [object Object]. Used under the CVE Program. CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.
CVSS / CWE: National Vulnerability Database (NVD), shown unmodified. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.

How we use these sources