CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2018-20148 — Wordpress Wordpress security vulnerability
In WordPress before 4.9.9 and 5.x before 5.0.1, contributors could conduct PHP object injection attacks via crafted metadata in a wp.getMediaItem XMLRPC call. This is caused by mishandling of serialized data at phar:// URLs in the wp_get_attachment_thumb_file function in wp-includes/post.php.
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.8 (3.0)
- Published
- 2018-12-14
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- php/wordpress
- Weaknesses
- CWE-502
Affected products
- wordpress / wordpress
- debian / debian_linux / 8.0
- debian / debian_linux / 9.0
Showing 3 representative product identities from 4 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.
Matched remediation archetype
Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
- Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
- Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.
Remediate safely
- Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
- If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
- Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.