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CVE-2026-78159

critical

The The Events Calendar plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in all versions up to, and including, 6.17.3 via the parse_array function.

The The Events Calendar plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in all versions up to, and including, 6.17.3 via the parse_array function. This is due to insufficient validation of the widget 'classes' map, allowing a plain-array payload to bypass the is_safe_widget_instance() object check and reach the callable-invocation sink in Element_Classes::parse_array(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute code on the server. Exploitation requires that the targeted site has comments enabled on tribe_events posts and that at least one comment containing a crafted wp:legacy-widget block has been submitted, as the attack chain is triggered when do_blocks() processes the single-event HTML including the comment area.

CVSS
9.8
9.8 (CVSS v3.1)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity source: NVD CVSS v3.1 (security@wordfence.com)
Timeline (UTC)
Published: 2026-09-12 08:16
Modified: 2026-09-14 17:17
NVD status: Deferred
Last synced 1 day ago
Verified against the source API 2026-10-27 06:52 UTC
Exploitation
Not listed in CISA KEV (as of last catalog sync)
Absence from KEV does not mean a CVE is not exploited. Exploitation status: unknown (no authoritative evidence in our sources).

Affected products

Not reported by the source (unknown — not "none").

Weakness classification (CWE)

Source: NVD / CISA. “NVD-CWE-Other” and “NVD-CWE-noinfo” mean NVD could not assign a specific weakness.

Mitigation & advisories

No vendor advisory or patch reference tagged by NVD. Check the references below.

References

Data sources

NVD CVE API 2.0 — fetched 2026-10-27 06:52 UTC · record ↗

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