CVE Intelligence
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HIGH

CVE-2026-16144

CVE-2026-16144 — Kali Forms <= 2.4.20 - Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution via 'thisPermalink' Field Parameter

The Kali Forms — Contact Form & Drag-and-Drop Builder plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in all versions up to, and including, 2.4.20 via the _save_data function. This is due to insufficient validation of the 'thisPermalink' field value before it overwrites a trusted callable placeholder, allowing attacker-controlled strings to reach call_user_func() in _save_data(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute code on the server. Exploitation requires the target form to define a field with a name matching one of the reserved placeholder keys ('thisPermalink', 'entryCounter', or 'submission_link'), as check_if_placeholders_changed() only processes POST keys present in the form's field_type_map.

Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, Wordfence

Triage

Is it exploited, how likely is exploitation, what does it touch, and how severe do the scoring sources call it.

Exploitation

Unreported

no source claims exploitation

EPSS

1%

chance of exploitation in 30 days

Affects

wpchill

kali_forms_contact_form_drag_and_drop_builder

CVSS base

8.1

HIGH

CISA SSVC assessment

Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.

CISA

Exploitation

None

none · proof-of-concept · active

Automatable

No

can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps

Technical impact

Total

partial · total control of the vulnerable component

Affected scope

The catalog records vendors and products as separate lists, not pairs, so which product belongs to which vendor is not something this page can say.

Vendors (1)

wpchill

Products (1)

kali forms contact form drag and drop builder

Every base score collected

Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
8.1CVSS 3.1HIGH——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-94

Attack patterns reported against this CVE. The ATT&CK techniques below are inferred from its weakness class.

  • T1027.006Obfuscated Files or Information: HTML Smuggling
  • T1027.009Obfuscated Files or Information: Embedded Payloads
  • T1564.009Hide Artifacts: Resource Forking

References

12 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

  • wpchillevery CVE for this vendor
  • CWE-94other pages naming this weakness

Not in any source we poll

Listed rather than left blank: an empty field and an unmeasured one look identical on screen, and only one is a reason to look elsewhere.

  • No confirmed IOCs, IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or malware artifacts supplied.
  • No organization-specific asset inventory, compensating-control status, or patch deployment evidence supplied.
  • No exploit packet captures, log samples, or incident case IDs supplied.