Hackers start exploiting critical WordPress flaw for code execution

Threat actors have moved from probing WordPress sites vulnerable to CVE-2026-87902 to exploiting the flaw to write files to disk that execute shell commands when accessed.

Initial attack traffic was only for reconnaissance and started less than five hours after the patch was released in WordPress 7.1.2. Malicious activity increased by ten times, and attackers are now trying to deliver payloads.

WordPress security firm Patchstack reports that it observed the first malicious requests at 17:44 UTC on September 22 from a small group of IP addresses targeting multiple sites under its protection.

Discovered by security researcher Robert Ressl, the issue is an unauthenticated path traversal bug that can lead to remote code execution (RCE) under certain conditions.

The WordPress security team assesses that CVE-2026-87902 has critical severity, assigning a score of 9.2 out of 10.