CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2019-20041 — Wordpress Wordpress security vulnerability

Critical CVSS 9.8

wp_kses_bad_protocol in wp-includes/kses.php in WordPress before 5.3.1 mishandles the HTML5 colon named entity, allowing attackers to bypass input sanitization, as demonstrated by the javascript: substring.

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.8 (3.1)
Published
2019-12-27
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
php/wordpress
Weaknesses
CWE-20

Affected products

  • wordpress / wordpress
  • debian / debian_linux / 8.0
  • debian / debian_linux / 9.0
  • debian / debian_linux / 10.0

Matched remediation archetype

General vulnerability remediation

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Confirm the affected component, deployment paths, reachable interfaces, and enabled features from inventories and configuration, without probing production destructively.
  • Compare the advisory's affected conditions with the repository lockfiles, build manifests, artifacts, and runtime inventory.
  • Identify data sensitivity, trust boundaries, and privilege level for every confirmed affected deployment.

Remediate safely

  • Apply a vendor-supported fix or remove the affected component or feature; record the selected change and its source in the repository.
  • Update direct and transitive dependency locks, generated artifacts, deployment manifests, and asset inventories together.
  • Add a regression test for the documented unsafe condition using inert inputs and preserve rollback instructions.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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