CVE-2016-6896: WordPress

High severity, CVSS 7.1. EPSS: 38.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

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.

Affected products

• WordPress WordPress: version 4.5.3 only

Published 2017-01-18. Last modified 2026-06-17.