Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:NSummary
CVE-2024-31211 is a medium-severity Deserialization of Untrusted Data (CWE-502) vulnerability in Wordpress Wordpress. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 15% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
WordPress contains a deserialization vulnerability in the WP_HTML_Token class that permits code execution through its __destruct magic method when untrusted instances are unserialized. The flaw affects WordPress versions 6.4.0 and 6.4.1; versions before 6.4.0 are unaffected, and the issue was resolved in the 6.4.2 release published on 6 December 2023. The weakness is tracked as CWE-502 and carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 5.5.
An attacker with high privileges can supply a malicious serialized WP_HTML_Token object over the network, triggering arbitrary code execution with limited confidentiality and integrity impact and a scope change. Exploitation therefore requires an authenticated user account possessing administrative or equivalent rights rather than unauthenticated or low-privileged access.
The official advisory published in the WordPress GitHub repository states that the fix is included in version 6.4.2 and recommends that sites running 6.4.0 or 6.4.1 update immediately. The current EPSS score of 0.3971, with a recorded peak of 0.4488, indicates moderate and slightly elevated exploitation interest following disclosure.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-29111
Vulnerability Data
WordPress is an open publishing platform for the Web. Unserialization of instances of the `WP_HTML_Token` class allows for code execution via its `__destruct()` magic method. This issue was fixed in WordPress 6.4.2 on December 6th, 2023. Versions prior to 6.4.0…
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are not affected.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation can uncover deserialization flaws before deployment.
Input validation directly stops deserialization of untrusted data by ensuring inputs are valid before processing.
Engineering principles such as safe deserialization and input sanitization structurally prevent the weakness from being introduced.
Integrity verification tools can detect malformed or tampered serialized data after the fact.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
PR.PS-02 addresses only post-deployment updates/patching and cannot prevent introduction of unsafe deserialization code, yet it can remediate some instances when the flaw exists in outdated libraries or components.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing includes validation of deserialization routines and the use of untrusted data, reducing the likelihood that unsafe object reconstruction will be deployed.
Requiring vetted libraries, regular updates and SAST before release reduces the likelihood that deserialization logic will accept and act on attacker-controlled serialized objects.
Regular scanning of third-party libraries and timely patching reduce the likelihood that unsafe deserialization vulnerabilities remain active.
Mandatory malware scanning of data received over networks or storage media intercepts malicious serialized payloads before they are deserialized by the target application.