Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 6.1

CVE-2019-20042 json

In wp-includes/formatting.php in WordPress 3.7 to 5.3.0, the function wp_targeted_link_rel() can be used in a particular way to result in a…

published 2019-12-27 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2019-10598

cvss
6.1
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.8%
EPSS 2.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 86%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In wp-includes/formatting.php in WordPress 3.7 to 5.3.0, the function wp_targeted_link_rel() can be used in a particular way to result in a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. This has been patched in WordPress 5.3.1, along with all the previous WordPress versions from 3.7 to 5.3 via a minor release.

Patch / fix

  • wordpress wordpress 5.3.1
  • wordpress Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.3.2+dfsg1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2019-20042

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2019-20042 updated cvss 6.1

wordpress: XSS through wp_targeted_link_rel

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

2.76% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 86% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 6.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.