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CVE-2019-20041

CRITICAL severity · CVSS 9.8 · Improper input validation
9.8CVSS CRITICAL

Summary

wp_kses_bad_protocol in wp-includes/kses.php in WordPress before 5.3.1 mishandles the HTML5 colon named entity, allowing attackers to bypass input sanitization, as demonstrated by the javascript: substring.

Impact & exploitability

Attack vectorNetwork
Attack complexityLow
Privileges requiredNone
User interactionNone
Confidentiality impactHigh
Integrity impactHigh
Availability impactHigh
Exploit probability (EPSS)1%

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products we track (1)

Recommendation

Apply the vendor fix promptly. Open any affected product above for its exact safe version.

Official patch: https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/commit/b1975463dd995da19bb40d3fa0786498717e3c53 ↗

Last checked: Wed, 10 Jun 2026 22:18:30 UTC