CVE-2026-16585

high

Published 2026-07-28 · Modified 2026-07-28

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CVSS v3

7.2

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

7.2

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.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

81%

Patch ETA

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Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

CWEs

CWE-22

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.