CVE-2026-16585

high

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.

References

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/e9274957-7584-4df6-bb2a-d745510f5033?source=cve

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3623636/bp-better-messages/trunk/addons/stickers/rest.php?old=3527109&old_path=bp-better-messages%2Ftrunk%2Faddons%2Fstickers%2Frest.php

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/bp-better-messages/tags/2.15.19/addons/stickers/rest.php#L287

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/bp-better-messages/tags/2.15.19/addons/stickers/rest.php#L285

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/bp-better-messages/tags/2.15.19/addons/stickers/rest.php#L153

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/bp-better-messages/tags/2.15.19/addons/stickers/pack-manager.php#L764

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-07-28

Updated: 2026-07-28

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 8.3

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:M/C:C/I:C/A:C

Severity: High

CVSS v3

Base Score: 7.2

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

Severity: High

EPSS

EPSS: 0.00734