EmailKit <= 1.6.5 — Authenticated (Author+) Arbitrary File Read via 'emailkit-editor-template' REST Parameter

Am I affected?

• Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under EmailKit – Email Customizer for WooCommerce & WP.
• No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.

What to do

1. Update to version 1.6.6, or a newer patched version
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch EmailKit – Email Customizer for WooCommerce & WP to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Nguyen Cong Quang.

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.

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. May 4, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity medium, CVSS 6.5

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated