CVE-2019-20043: Debian Linux

Medium severity, CVSS 4.3. EPSS: 2.5% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In in wp-includes/rest-api/endpoints/class-wp-rest-posts-controller.php in WordPress 3.7 to 5.3.0, authenticated users who do not have the rights to publish a post are able to mark posts as sticky or unsticky via the REST API. For example, the contributor role does not have such rights, but this allowed them to bypass that. This has been patched in WordPress 5.3.1, along with all the previous WordPress versions from 3.7 to 5.3 via a minor release.

Affected products

• Debian Debian Linux: version 9.0 only; version 10.0 only
• WordPress WordPress: from 3.7, before 5.3.1 (fixed in 5.3.1)

Published 2019-12-27. Last modified 2026-06-17.