Everest Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form, Quiz, Survey & Custom Form Builder: Filesystem traversal
Everest Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form, Quiz, Survey & Custom Form Builder is affected by filesystem traversal. The vulnerable path is reachable without authentication. A crafted path can escape the intended directory and reach files or directories elsewhere on the server. The published affected range is <= 3.4.4.
- Component
- Everest Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form, Quiz, Survey & Custom Form Builder
- Plugin slug
everest-forms- Affected
- <= 3.4.4
- Safe version
> 3.4.4- Published
- Apr 20, 2026
This CVE was published Apr 20, 2026 and is one of 21 known issues for this plugin.
Update, patch or deactivate.
Update Everest Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form, Quiz, Survey & Custom Form Builder to a release after 3.4.4, or disable and remove it until a fixed version is available.
A safe version is available, so updating to that version or later is the preferred remediation. If an immediate update is not practical, consider a targeted application patch or temporarily restricting the affected functionality.
Deactivate only when warranted by your risk profile, or when advised by your hosting provider in the limited circumstances where the vulnerability cannot otherwise be mitigated. If you’re unsure which action is appropriate, contact Fused or your hosting provider for guidance.
Technical description
The Everest Forms plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Arbitrary File Read and Deletion in all versions up to, and including, 3.4.4. This is due to the plugin trusting attacker-controlled old_files data from public form submissions as legitimate server-side upload state, and converting attacker-supplied URLs into local filesystem paths using regex-based string replacement without canonicalization or directory boundary enforcement. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to read arbitrary local files (e.g., wp-config.php) by injecting path-traversal payloads into the old_files upload field parameter, which are then attached to notification emails. The same path resolution is also used in the post-email cleanup routine, which calls unlink() on the resolved path, resulting in the targeted file being deleted after being attached. This can lead to full site compromise through disclosure of database credentials and authentication salts from wp-config.php, and denial of service through deletion of critical files. Prerequisite: The form must contain a file-upload or image-upload field, and disable storing entry information.
CVE / CNA vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H