A critical vulnerability in the Elementor Pro WordPress plugin is being actively exploited to upload malicious PHP files and execute commands remotely on the affected websites.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-32475, affects the Elementor Pro versions 4.2.1 and lower. This issue was patched on August 19. Elementor Pro has more than 6 million active installations and is widely used to design WordPress websites with drag-and-drop tools.
The vulnerability is related to the insufficient validation of file-upload arrays in Elementor Pro forms. Attackers can exploit this issue by uploading an empty file as the first element of the upload array and a malicious PHP file as the second. Then the plugin will not validate the following files in the array, thus allowing the attacker-controlled PHP payload to be successfully uploaded on the server without any additional checks.
Once the malicious file is uploaded, it will be stored on the /wp-content/uploads/elementor/forms/ directory with a randomly generated name but preserving the attacker’s .php extension. Then the attacker will be able to directly access this file on the server to execute arbitrary commands and potentially deploy a webshell for further attacks.
To successfully exploit the vulnerability, an attacker needs to have access to a WordPress website with a published Elementor Pro Form widget that contains at least one File Upload field.
This is a relatively common case for WordPress websites that utilize Elementor Pro forms.
WordPress security company Defiant, which operates the Wordfence firewall, noted that exploitation began on August 19, the same day Elementor released the 4.2.2 version to address the vulnerability. Wordfence observed that the traffic was especially heavy between August 19 and 23, having blocked more than 190,000 attempts to target its customers.
Wordfence has identified IP addresses that were responsible for thousands of exploitation attempts. Website administrators can add these addresses to their blocklists to protect their WordPress sites.
Administrators that utilize Elementor Pro need to make sure to update their software to the latest versions, preferably 4.2.2 or newer. Moreover, they should check their /wp-content/uploads/elementor/forms/ directories for any unexpected .php files.
As the name suggests, the directory is supposed to contain the files that users upload with Elementor forms, meaning that the discovery of any .php files should be investigated and potentially result in an intrusion assessment.
Read the original article: