Email disclosure via unrestricted REST user search
Published Oct 16, 2023 · Updated Apr 23, 2025
Information disclosure in affected WordPress 4.7.0 through 6.3.1 releases allows remote attackers to recover post-author email addresses. The /wp-json/wp/v2/users endpoint passes its search value to WP_User_Query without restricting search_columns, so query preparation includes user_email and exposes match results as an oracle. No authentication or user interaction is required, but a target account must have a public post and recovery requires repeated character-by-character requests.
Summary
What happened
Information disclosure in affected WordPress 4.7.0 through 6.3.1 releases allows remote attackers to recover post-author email addresses. The /wp-json/wp/v2/users endpoint passes its search value to WP_User_Query without restricting search_columns, so query preparation includes user_email and exposes match results as an oracle. No authentication or user interaction is required, but a target account must have a public post and recovery requires repeated character-by-character requests.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-5561
- Published
- Oct 16, 2023
- Updated
- Apr 23, 2025
- Vendor
- WordPress.org
- Product
- WordPress
- Classifications
- CWE-200, T1589.002
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Oct 16, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Apr 23, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
Compare your product and version with the public record. A matching version still requires validation against your environment.
Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=4.7.0 <4.7.27
- Affected versionversion=4.8.0 <4.8.23
- Affected versionversion=4.9.0 <4.9.24
- Affected versionversion=5.0.0 <5.0.20
- Affected versionversion=5.2.0 <5.2.19
- Affected versionversion=5.3.0 <5.3.16
- Affected versionversion=5.4.0 <5.4.14
- Affected versionversion=5.5.0 <5.5.13
- Affected versionversion=5.6.0 <5.6.12
- Affected versionversion=5.7.0 <5.7.10
- Affected versionversion=5.8.0 <5.8.8
- Affected versionversion=5.9.0 <5.9.8
- Affected versionversion=6.0.0 <6.0.6
- Affected versionversion=6.1.0 <6.1.4
- Affected versionversion=6.2.0 <6.2.3
- Affected versionversion=6.3.0 <6.3.2
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- WPScan post-author email oracle proof of conceptproof of concept · demonstrated
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
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