Frontend File Manager Plugin <= 23.6 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Arbitrary File Deletion

The Frontend File Manager Plugin plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Authenticated Arbitrary File Deletion in versions up to and including 23.6. This is due to a case-sensitive bypass of the wpfm_dir_path parameter sanitization in the wpfm_file_meta_update AJAX handler, where supplying WPFM_DIR_PATH in uppercase evades the unset check and is normalized to wpfm_dir_path by sanitize_key() during update_post_meta(), allowing an attacker to overwrite the stored file path with an arbitrary filesystem path that is then passed directly to unlink() in delete_file_locally() without any directory containment validation. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with Subscriber-level access to delete arbitrary files on the server, including sensitive files such as wp-config.php, potentially leading to full site takeover.

An attacker needs Subscriber access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. Classes like this one can leave something behind, so the staged malware scanner is the second half: it looks for dropped files and modified code rather than for the request that created them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.

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