Backup Migration <= 2.1.5.1 — Authenticated (Administrator+) OS Command Injection via 'file' Parameter

Am I affected?

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

What to do

1. Update to version 2.1.5.2, or a newer patched version
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch Backup Migration to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to at1as.

The Backup Migration plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to OS Command Injection in all versions up to, and including, 2.1.5.1 due to insufficient sanitization of the `file` POST parameter on the `restoreBackup()` AJAX handler. The handler applies `esc_attr()` — an HTML-context sanitizer that does not strip shell metacharacters — and concatenates the result, unquoted, into a `php-cli -f … bmi_restore <file> <remote>` command passed to `exec()`. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Administrator-level access (or any user granted the plugin's `do_backups` capability) and above, to execute arbitrary OS commands as the web-server user, bypassing WordPress hardening constants such as `DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT` and `DISALLOW_FILE_MODS` that would otherwise prevent code execution from the admin UI. This is an incomplete fix of CVE-2023-7002, which patched the same pattern only in the `$_POST['url']` path of `handleQuickMigration()`; the equivalent mitigations (`rawurlencode()` + explicit shell-metachar replacement + double-quoting in `exec()`) were never applied to `$backupName`.

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. Aug 4, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity high, CVSS 7.2

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated