Cross-site scripting in WordPress - CVE-2019-20041
Published: January 6, 2020
Vulnerability identifier: #VU23945
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4: 5.1 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2019-20041
CWE-ID: CWE-79
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The disclosed vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
The vulnerability exists due to insufficient sanitization of user-supplied data within the wp_kses_bad_protocol() function in wp-includes/kses.php when processing HTML5 colon named entity. A remote attacker can trick the victim to follow a specially crafted link and execute arbitrary HTML and script code in user's browser in context of vulnerable website.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to steal potentially sensitive information, change appearance of the web page, perform phishing and drive-by-download attacks.
Affected software
WordPress
wordpress (Debian package)
wordpress (Debian package)
How to mitigate CVE-2019-20041
Install updates from vendor's website.
WordPress - addressed in versions 4.5.20, 4.6.17, 4.7.16, 4.8.12, 4.9.13, 5.0.8, 5.1.4, 5.2.5, 5.3.1
wordpress (Debian package) - addressed in versions 4.7.5+dfsg-2+deb9u6, 5.0.4+dfsg1-1+deb10u1, 5.0.4+dfsg1-1+deb10u2, 5.4.1+dfsg1-1
wordpress (Debian package) - addressed in versions 4.7.5+dfsg-2+deb9u6, 5.0.4+dfsg1-1+deb10u1, 5.0.4+dfsg1-1+deb10u2, 5.4.1+dfsg1-1