Vulnerabilities

Hackers Are Actively Exploiting a Critical WordPress Flaw — Update Now

Act now! A severe WordPress vulnerability, CVE-2026-87902, is under attack. Update to 7.1.2 or your branch's patched release to close off a path to remote code execution.

By Content Team

Sep 25, 2026

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A WordPress core vulnerability, CVE-2026-87902, came under active attack within hours of its patch. Patchstack saw exploitation begin on September 22, 2026, the same day WordPress 7.1.2 shipped, quickly escalating from reconnaissance to attempts at remote code execution. The flaw affects versions 4.7.0 through 7.1.1 and carries a CVSS 4.0 score of 9.2 (Critical). No account or user interaction is needed.

Attackers exploit a path traversal bug in WordPress's page-template function to load local PHP files, then abuse PEAR's pearcmd.php to write malicious scripts to server temp directories. The inclusion needs an active theme with a top-level directory starting with "page-". Code execution also needs PEAR with PHP's register_argc_argv setting on, which is the default in official PHP Docker images and cPanel below PHP 8.5.

Automated scanning tools are now accelerating attacks at scale. Update immediately to WordPress 7.1.2 or your branch's patched release. Fixes run from 7.0.6, 6.9.9, and 6.8.10 back to 4.7.37.

If you can't patch yet, block traversal sequences in the pagename parameter, since no real page slug contains one. Unexpected PHP files in /tmp or /var/tmp mean an attempt succeeded, so treat the host as compromised.

Source: Cybersecurity News

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