VulnerabilityDeferred

CVE-2026-16585

HIGH 7.2EPSS 0.71%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.71%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

The Better Messages – Chat Rooms, Group Chat, Private Messages & AI Chat Bots plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary file deletion due to insufficient file path validation in the delete_sticker function in all versions up to, and including, 2.15.19. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with administrator-level access and above, to delete arbitrary files on the server, which can easily lead to remote code execution when the right file is deleted (such as wp-config.php). The prefix check intended to restrict deletion to the uploads directory can be bypassed by crafting a URL that begins with the legitimate uploads base URL but embeds ../ traversal sequences in the path portion, as the normalize_sticker function only applies esc_url_raw(), which does not strip ../ sequences, allowing the traversal payload to be stored verbatim in WordPress options.

CVSS 3.1: 7.2 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS: 0.71% probability · 52th percentile
CISA KEV: Not listed
Weakness: CWE-22
Source: security@wordfence.com

References

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.