CVE-2016-6897

Exp

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the wp_ajax_update_plugin function in wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php in WordPress before 4.6 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of subscribers for /dev/random read operations by leveraging a late call to the check_ajax_referer function, a related issue to CVE-2016-6896.

Published: 2017-01-18 Last update: 2026-06-16 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2016-6897 is rated High Exploit Risk (74.3/100): CVSS Medium severity, with high exploitation likelihood (EPSS 28.26%, 98th percentile). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2016-6897

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
40288 exploit_db edb 2016-08-22 Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2016-6897

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-07-10 29.17% 28.26% -0.91%
2 2026-07-07 28.26% 29.17% +0.91%
3 2026-06-15 — 28.26% —

Full EPSS history (38 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2016-6897

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.0 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 2.8 3.6 [email protected]
4.3 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:M)
Exploitation needs some favorable conditions, but not exceptional ones.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:P)
Partial confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:N)
No integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:N)
No availability impact.
 8.6 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2016-6897

OS Trackers for CVE-2016-6897

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2016-6897 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (wordpress), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-6897
ubuntu medium CVE-2016-6897 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (wordpress), 23 status rows across 23 suites (artful, bionic, cosmic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, precise, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial, yakkety, zesty): not-affected 16, ignored 4, DNE 1, needed 1, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2016-6897

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2016-6897

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
wordpress wordpress <= 4.5.5 cpe:2.3:a:wordpress:wordpress:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2016-6897

cvelogic Threat Intelligence