WordPress wordpress core
WordPress Core <= 4.5.3 — Denial of Service
CVE-2016-6896Published · Updated Action summary
Affected: <4.6Update to 4.6 or newer
All remediation steps- Severity
- Medium6.5
- CVSS
- 6.5CVSS 3.1 · CNA (Wordfence)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HWhat does this vector mean?
AV:NAttack vector- Network
AC:LAttack complexity- Low
PR:LPrivileges required- Low
UI:NUser interaction- None
S:UScope- Unchanged
C:NConfidentiality- None
I:NIntegrity- None
A:HAvailability- High
- Required access
- Unknown
- Exploit prediction (EPSS)
- No score
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
On this page7
Am I affected?
WordPress wordpress
- Affected< 4.6
- Patched in4.6
Update to 4.6 or newer.
You are affected if you run < 4.6. Version 4.6 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.
What to do
- Update to version 4.6, 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, credited to Yorick Koster,.
Directory traversal vulnerability in the wp_ajax_update_plugin function in wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php in WordPress 4.5.3 allows remote authenticated users to cause a denial of service or read certain text files via a .. (dot dot) in the plugin parameter to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php, as demonstrated by /dev/random read operations that deplete the entropy pool.
Exploits & references
Proof-of-concept & detection
No public proof-of-concept or detection template is known for this vulnerability.
Advisories & patches
- Advisorywordfence.com
Timeline
CVE published
Severity medium, CVSS 6.5
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.
- VulnCrest content
- Summary, remediation guidance and page layout © VulnCrest. Not sourced from NVD.