WordPress Plugin Vulnerabilities

EmailKit < 1.6.6 - Authenticated (Author+) Arbitrary File Read via 'emailkit-editor-template' REST Parameter

Description

The EmailKit plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Arbitrary File Read in all versions up to and including 1.6.5. This is due to a flawed path traversal validation in the create_template() method of the CheckForm class, where realpath() is called on the allowed base directory (wp-content/uploads/emailkit/templates/) which may not exist, causing it to return false. In PHP 8.x, strpos($real_path, false) implicitly converts false to an empty string, and strpos() with an empty needle always returns 0, causing the check strpos(...) !== 0 to evaluate to false and bypassing the path validation entirely. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Author-level access and above, to read arbitrary files from the server, including sensitive files such as wp-config.php, by supplying an absolute path to the emailkit-editor-template REST API parameter.

Affects Plugins

Fixed in 1.6.6

References

Classification

Type
LFI
OWASP top 10
CWE

Miscellaneous

Original Researcher
Nguyen Cong Quang
Verified
No

Timeline

Publicly Published
2026-05-04 (about 1 month ago)
Added
2026-05-04 (about 1 month ago)
Last Updated
2026-05-05 (about 1 month ago)

Other