CVE-2025-13516

SureMail – SMTP and Email Logs Plugin with Amazon SES, Postmark, and Other Providers <= 1.9.0 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload

2025-12-01 19:54
type5afe

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.9.1
Affected Version
<= 1.9.0
CVSS
8.1High
Weakness type
CWE-434 · Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type
CVE
CVE-2025-13516
View all SureMail – SMTP and Email Logs Plugin with Amazon SES, Postmark, and Other Providers vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2025-13516 is a high-severity Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type vulnerability in the SureMail WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.9.0. 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 1.9.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2025, reported by type5afe.

Vulnerability Overview

The SureMail – SMTP and Email Logs Plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type in versions up to and including 1.9.0. This is due to the plugin's save_file() function in inc/emails/handler/uploads.php which duplicates all email attachments to a web-accessible directory (wp-content/uploads/suremails/attachments/) without validating file extensions or content types. Files are saved with predictable names derived from MD5 hashes of their content. While the plugin attempts to protect this directory with an Apache .htaccess file to disable PHP execution, this protection is ineffective on nginx, IIS, and Lighttpd servers, or on misconfigured Apache installations. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to achieve Remote Code Execution by uploading malicious PHP files through any public form that emails attachments, calculating the predictable filename, and directly accessing the file to execute arbitrary code granted they are exploiting a site running on an affected web server configuration.

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-434: Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type

SureMail <= 1.9.0 carries this weakness at save_file(), and reaching it takes no account at all. An unrestricted file upload lets a caller store a file whose type or destination the application does not properly constrain.

If an uploaded file lands anywhere the server will execute, the flaw becomes remote code execution and the site should be treated as fully compromised. For SureMail the fix is 1.9.1: builds <= 1.9.0 are affected, anything from 1.9.1 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.9.1, 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: SureMail 1.9.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Scanner
  • Login Security

External References

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C