WordPress before 5.2.3 allows XSS in post previews by authenticated users.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2019-16223 is rated High Exploit Risk (69.4/100): CVSS Medium severity, with high exploitation likelihood (EPSS 5.18%, 91th percentile). Core evidence: 2 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: 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.
| EDB-ID | Source | Kind | Published | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 49338 | exploit_db | edb | 2021-01-04 | Exploit-DB ↗ |
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ |
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 | 2026-06-15 | 4.34% | 5.18% | +0.84% |
| 2 | 2026-03-04 | 2.58% | 4.34% | +1.75% |
| 3 | 2026-03-01 | — | 2.58% | — |
Full EPSS history (38 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.4 | 3.1 | MEDIUM |
|
2.3 | 2.7 | [email protected] |
| 3.5 | 2.0 | LOW |
|
6.8 | 2.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
not yet assigned | CVE-2019-16223 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-2019-16223 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2019-16223 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (wordpress), 18 status rows across 18 suites (bionic, disco, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): ignored 10, needs-triage 7, DNE 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2019-16223 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| wordpress | wordpress | < 5.2.3 | cpe:2.3:a:wordpress:wordpress:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 8.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 9.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 10.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160745/WordPress-Core-5.2.2-Cross-Site-Scripting.html | Exploit Third Party Advisory VDB Entry |
| https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/10/msg00023.html | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| https://seclists.org/bugtraq/2020/Jan/8 | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| https://wordpress.org/news/2019/09/wordpress-5-2-3-security-and-maintenance-release/ | Release Notes Vendor Advisory |
| https://wpvulndb.com/vulnerabilities/9862 | Third Party Advisory |
| https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4599 | Third Party Advisory |
| https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4677 | Third Party Advisory |