Paid Membership Subscriptions <= 2.15.5 - Unauthenticated Local File Inclusion
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 2.15.5
- Affected Plugin
- Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction
- Affected Version
<= 2.15.4- CVSS
- 8.1High
- Weakness type
- CWE-98 · Improper Control of Filename for Include/Require Statement in PHP Program ('PHP Remote File Inclusion')
- CVE
CVE-2025-54017
At a glance
CVE-2025-54017 is a high-severity Improper Control of Filename for Include/Require Statement in PHP Program ('PHP Remote File Inclusion') vulnerability in the Paid Membership Subscriptions WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.15.4. It carries a CVSS score of 8.1 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.15.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2025, reported by LVT-tholv2k.
Vulnerability Overview
The Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Local File Inclusion in all versions up to, and including, 2.15.5. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to include and execute arbitrary files on the server, allowing the execution of any PHP code in those files. This can be used to bypass access controls, obtain sensitive data, or achieve code execution in cases where images and other “safe” file types can be uploaded and included.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, and no privileges on the target site, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.
CWE-98: Improper Control of Filename for Include/Require Statement in PHP Program ('PHP Remote File Inclusion')
Paid Membership Subscriptions <= 2.15.4 carries this weakness at safe, and reaching it takes no account at all. PHP file inclusion means a path used by include or require is built from request data, so the file that gets executed is under the caller's influence.
Including an attacker-influenced file executes its contents, which is why this class is routinely chained with an upload or log-poisoning step to reach code execution. For Paid Membership Subscriptions the fix is 2.15.5: builds <= 2.15.4 are affected, anything from 2.15.5 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 2.15.5, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: 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. None of that substitutes for the fix: Paid Membership Subscriptions 2.15.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Scanner
- Login Security
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction
- 9.8CVE-2024-12919: Paid Membership Subscriptions Authentication Bypass
CVE-2024-12919 - 8.8CVE-2021-24728: Membership & Content Restriction SQL Injection
CVE-2021-24728 - 7.5CVE-2025-49870: Paid Member Subscriptions <= 2.15.1 SQL Injection
CVE-2025-49870 - 7.3CVE-2024-10261: Paid Membership… Arbitrary Shortcode Execution
CVE-2024-10261 - 6.4CVE-2025-31088: Paid Member Subscriptions <= 2.14.3 Stored XSS
CVE-2025-31088 - 6.1CVE-2026-57348: Paid Membership Subscriptions SSRF
CVE-2026-57348 - 6.1CVE-2026-39514: Paid Membership Subscriptions Reflected XSS
CVE-2026-39514 - 6.1CVE-2024-9222: Paid Membership Subscriptions Reflected XSS
CVE-2024-9222
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