---
title: "WEB-CMS-017 WordPress Cron Reachable by Visitors"
canonical: https://openvapt.com/checks/WEB-CMS-017.html
html: https://openvapt.com/checks/WEB-CMS-017.html
site: OpenVAPT, https://openvapt.com/
license: OpenVAPT Source-Available Licence 1.3, https://openvapt.com/legal/licence-text.html
modified: 2026-10-14
version: 0.1.0-alpha.6
---

# WEB-CMS-017 WordPress Cron Reachable by Visitors

Reports whether /wp-cron.php answers to anonymous requests on WordPress sites. Informational.

- Domain: Web Apps
- Severity: Info
- Control category: Secure Configuration
- Fix effort: low
- CVSS v3.1 vector: `CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:N`
- CIS Controls v8: 16.7
- NIST CSF 2.0: PR.PS-01
- CWE: CWE-770
- OWASP Top 10 2021: A05:2021
- OWASP WSTG v4.2: WSTG-CONF-05
- NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: CM-7, SC-5

## Why It Matters

WP-Cron runs scheduled tasks when visitors load pages, and wp-cron.php can be requested directly. On busy or targeted sites that lets anyone make the server do work on demand, and it is a frequent target for resource exhaustion; a system cron job is the documented production setup.

## How It Detects

Sends one GET for /wp-cron.php on each local site and reports a 200 response with an empty or non-HTML body (what wp-cron.php returns). Sites whose wp-config.php sets DISABLE_WP_CRON to true and block the file pass.

## How to Fix

Add define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true); to wp-config.php, run  */5 * * * * www-data php /var/www/<site>/wp-cron.php  from the system cron (or curl the URL from cron), and deny direct requests to wp-cron.php at the web server.

## How to Verify

```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}' https://<site>/wp-cron.php  prints 403 or 404.
```

## Learn the Theory

- [P6 Information Exposure and Misconfiguration](https://openvapt.com/academy/p6.md)
- [P14 CMS Hardening in Depth: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal](https://openvapt.com/academy/p14.md)
- [A6 Application Framework and CMS Configuration](https://openvapt.com/academy/a6.md)

## References

- [WordPress Developer Resources, Hooking WP-Cron Into the System Task Scheduler](https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/cron/hooking-wp-cron-into-the-system-task-scheduler/)
- [WordPress Developer Resources, Hardening WordPress](https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/security/hardening/)

## Source Code

https://github.com/OpenVAPT/openvapt/blob/574f7f3333c44b75a3c649e2d93a76d507f75adf/internal/checks/web/cms_depth.go

Run it: `openvapt scan --only WEB-CMS-017`. Read it offline: `openvapt explain WEB-CMS-017`.

---

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