What is CVE-2019-8943?

CVE-2019-8943 is a medium-severity vulnerability in WordPress, classified under Path Traversal. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2019-02-20.

How severe is CVE-2019-8943?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.

Is CVE-2019-8943 known to be exploited?

28 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Path Traversal in WordPress

CVE-2019-8943

WordPress through 5.0.3 allows Path Traversal in wp_crop_image(). An attacker (who has privileges to crop an image) can write the output image to an arbitrary directory via a filename containing two image extensions and ../ sequences, such as a filename ending with the .jpg?/../../file.jpg substring.

Vulnerability class: Path Traversal (Directory Traversal)

Published 2019-02-20 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.920 (99.8th percentile), scored 2026-10-15.

High probability of exploitation in the next 30 days — patch promptly. 100th percentile — 99.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.926 · newest: 0.920 · change: -0.007

Affected products

WordPress

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-22 — Path Traversal

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

www.exploit-db.com/exploits/46511/ (Exploit, VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, exploit)
blog.ripstech.com/2019/wordpress-image-remote-code-execution/ (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)
www.securityfocus.com/bid/107089 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
packetstormsecurity.com/files/152396/WordPress-5.0.0-crop-image-Shell-Upload.ht… (Exploit, VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory)
www.rapid7.com/db/modules/exploit/multi/http/wp_crop_rce (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)
www.exploit-db.com/exploits/46662/ (Exploit, Mailing List, VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, exploit)
packetstormsecurity.com/files/161213/WordPress-5.0.0-Remote-Code-Execution.html (Exploit, VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-8943?: CVE-2019-8943 is a medium-severity vulnerability in WordPress, classified under Path Traversal. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2019-02-20.
How severe is CVE-2019-8943?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2019-8943 known to be exploited?: 28 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.