CVE-2016-20079
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedWordPress Dharma Booking 2.28.3 and earlier contains a local file inclusion vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers to include arbitrary files by manipulating the gateway parameter. Attackers can supply file paths with directory traversal sequences or null byte injection to the gateway parameter in proccess.php to read sensitive files like configuration and system files.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysisA PHP include or require path is built from user-controlled input, so an attacker can steer it to a remote URL or an unintended local file — and because the target is then executed as code, this often becomes remote code execution. It is the classic remote/local file-inclusion trap. The fix is never to build include paths from input: map requests to a fixed allow-list of includable files.
General guidance for the php file inclusion (rfi/lfi) class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
dbcve · scopedDharma Booking plugin version > 2.28.3 (latest available version from wordpress.org)
- Check current installed version of the Dharma Booking plugin in WordPress admin under Plugins > Installed Plugins
- If running version 2.28.3 or earlier, navigate to Dashboard > Updates or Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin
- Download and install the latest version of Dharma Booking plugin from the official WordPress plugin repository
- Verify the new version number is greater than 2.28.3 after installation
- Ensure the proccess.php file has been updated as part of the plugin upgrade
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
There is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.
Free. We build fixes in the order the community asks for them — and we’ll tell you the moment this one lands.
We develop and verify an original fix where the vendor hasn’t, from $1,600. Deployed to your staging first — never straight to production.
Scope it with usSee what else the community needs solved on the solutions-needed board.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2016-20079 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2016-20079 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data