Breaking News WP <= 1.3 — Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Subscriber+) Local File Inclusion/Read

Am I affected?

• Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under Breaking News WP.
• No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.

What to do

1. No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch Breaking News WP to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to t0ann9uy3n.

The Breaking News WP plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Local File Inclusion in all versions up to, and including, 1.3. This is due to the brnwp_ajax_form AJAX endpoint lacking both authorization checks and CSRF verification, combined with insufficient path validation when the brnwp_theme option value is passed directly to an include() statement in the brnwp_show_breaking_news_wp() shortcode handler. While sanitize_text_field() is applied to user input, it does not strip directory traversal sequences (../). This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to overwrite the brnwp_theme option with a directory traversal payload (e.g., ../../../../etc/passwd) and subsequently trigger file inclusion of arbitrary files on the server when the shortcode is rendered.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

No public proof-of-concept or detection template is known for this vulnerability.

Advisories & patches

• Advisorywordfence.com

Related CVEs

Timeline

1. Apr 21, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity medium, CVSS 6.5

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated