Paid Downloads <= 3.15 — Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload via 'paiddownloads_update_file' Action

Am I affected?

• Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under Paid Downloads.
• No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.
• No account is needed to exploit this. Treat any exposed site on an affected version as at risk.

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 Paid Downloads to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Spy0x7.

The Paid Downloads plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Arbitrary File Upload in all versions up to, and including, 3.15 via the admin_request_handler function. This is due to missing authorization and file type validation in the admin_request_handler function, which is reachable unauthenticated via is_admin() returning true for /wp-admin/admin-post.php. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to upload files that may be executable, which makes remote code execution possible. On Apache servers where AllowOverride is enabled, an .htaccess file placed in the upload directory may block direct HTTP retrieval of uploaded files, limiting exploitability to stacks that do not honor .htaccess directives such as nginx, LiteSpeed, and Apache with AllowOverride None.

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. Sep 16, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity high, CVSS 8.1

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated