Vulnerability · Published Jan 5, 2023 · Assigned by mitre
CVE-2023-22622
Medium 5.3
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in the wordpress package (Ubuntu). There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 1.7% (higher than 78% of all known vulnerabilities). Ready-made attack tooling exists: public proof-of-concept code.
Official description
WordPress through 6.1.1 depends on unpredictable client visits to cause wp-cron.php execution and the resulting security updates, and the source code describes "the scenario where a site may not receive enough visits to execute scheduled tasks in a timely manner," but neither the installation guide nor the security guide mentions this default behavior, or alerts the user about security risks on installations with very few visits.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | wordpress | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-22622 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | wordpress | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-22622 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | wordpress | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-22622 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | wordpress | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-22622 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | wordpress | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-22622 |
Affected products (as reported)
References
- https://medium.com/%40thecpanelguy/the-nightmare-that-is-wpcron-php-ae31c1d3ae30
- https://www.tenable.com/plugins/was/113449
- https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/dca7b5204b5fea54e6d1774689777b359a9222ab/wp-cron.php#L5-L8
- https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/cron/
- https://wordpress.org/about/security/
- https://wordpress.org/support/article/how-to-install-wordpress/
- https://patchstack.com/articles/solving-unpredictable-wp-cron-problems-addressing-cve-2023-22622/