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The Events Calendar <= 6.17.3 — Unauthenticated Code Injection to Remote Code Execution via Widget 'classes' Map Callable Invocation

CVE-2026-78159Published · Updated

Action summary

Affected: ≤6.17.3Update to 6.17.3.1 or newer

All remediation steps
Watch plugin
Severity
Critical9.8
CVSS
9.8
CVSS 3.1 · CNA (Wordfence)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
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:H Confidentiality
High
I:H Integrity
High
A:H Availability
High
Weakness
CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code
Required access
No account needed
Exploit prediction (EPSS)
No score
CISA KEV
Not listed
On this page8

Am I affected?

The Events Calendar the-events-calendar

  1. Affected≤ 6.17.3
  2. Patched in6.17.3.1

Update to 6.17.3.1 or newer.

You are affected if you run ≤ 6.17.3. Version 6.17.3.1 and later are not affected by this issue.

  • Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under The Events Calendar.
  • 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 6.17.3.1, or a newer patched version
  2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
  3. Watch The Events Calendar to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Chloe Chamberland, Wordfence Argus.

The "The Events Calendar" plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in all versions up to, and including, 6.17.3 via the parse_array function. This is due to insufficient validation of the widget 'classes' map, allowing a plain-array payload to bypass the is_safe_widget_instance() object check and reach the callable-invocation sink in Element_Classes::parse_array(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute code on the server. Exploitation requires that the targeted site has comments enabled on tribe_events posts and that at least one comment containing a crafted wp:legacy-widget block has been submitted, as the attack chain is triggered when do_blocks() processes the single-event HTML including the comment area.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

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

Advisories & patches

More in The Events Calendar

All 47
More vulnerabilities in The Events Calendar
SeverityVulnerabilityCVEPublished
Medium6.4Authenticated (Contributor+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting
≤6.18.3Update to 6.18.3.1
CVE-2026-123464
Medium6.5Unauthenticated Arbitrary Shortcode Execution
≤6.18.3Update to 6.18.3.1
CVE-2026-123469
Medium4.3Missing Authorization
≤6.18.2Update to 6.18.3
CVE-2026-119367
Medium6.4Authenticated (Contributor+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting
≤6.18.2Update to 6.18.3
CVE-2026-119369
Medium5.3Missing Authorization
≤6.18.2Update to 6.18.3
CVE-2026-119368

Timeline

  1. CVE published

    Severity critical, CVSS 9.8

  2. 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.
VulnCrest content
Summary, remediation guidance and page layout © VulnCrest. Not sourced from NVD.

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