CVE-2026-6518

Description

The CMP – Coming Soon & Maintenance Plugin by NiteoThemes plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary file upload and remote code execution in all versions up to, and including, 4.1.16 via the `cmp_theme_update_install` AJAX action. This is due to the function only checking for the `publish_pages` capability (available to Editors and above) instead of `manage_options` (Administrators only), combined with a lack of proper validation on the user-supplied file URL and no verification of the downloaded file's content before extraction. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Administrator-level access and above, to force the server to download and extract a malicious ZIP file from a remote attacker-controlled URL into a web-accessible directory (`wp-content/plugins/cmp-premium-themes/`), resulting in remote code execution. Due to the lack of a nonce for Editors, they are unable to exploit this vulnerability.

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/cmp-coming-soon-maintenance/tags/4.1.16/niteo-cmp.php#L1421
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/cmp-coming-soon-maintenance/tags/4.1.16/niteo-cmp.php#L1437
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/cmp-coming-soon-maintenance/tags/4.1.16/niteo-cmp.php#L1447
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?old_path=%2Fcmp-coming-soon-maintenance/tags/4.1.16&new_path=%2Fcmp-coming-soon-maintenance/tags/4.1.17
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d6fb275b-dbba-46df-b170-977ef4a84c4c?source=cve