WordPress wordpress core

WordPress Core < 4.0 — Missing Session Cookie Expiration

CVE-2012-5868Published Dec 27, 2012 · Updated Nov 13, 2026

Affected: <4.0Update to 4.0 or newer

All remediation steps

Watch core

Severity

Medium5.4

CVSS

5.4

CVSS 3.1 · CNA (Wordfence)

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

What does this vector mean?

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

Weakness

CWE-613 DEPRECATED: Insufficient Session Expiration

Required access

No account needed

Exploit prediction (EPSS)

No score

CISA KEV

Not listed

On this page7

Am I affected?

WordPress wordpress

Affected< 4.0
Patched in4.0

You are affected if you run < 4.0. Version 4.0 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 4.0, 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.

WordPress Core before 4.0 does not invalidate a wordpress_sec session cookie upon an administrator's logout action, which makes it easier for remote attackers to discover valid session identifiers via a brute-force attack, or modify data via a replay attack.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

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

Advisories & patches

Advisorywordfence.com

Timeline

Dec 27, 2012
CVE published
Severity medium, CVSS 5.4
Nov 13, 2026
Record last updated

Sources & licenses

Wordfence record

Vulnerability data: Wordfence Intelligence. Copyright 2012-2026 Defiant Inc. Licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0.
CVE® identifiers: Copyright 1999-2026 The MITRE Corporation. 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