Executive brief
The Preservation theme for WordPress is vulnerable to a security flaw that allows unauthorized individuals to access sensitive files on the web server. By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could view critical configuration files, such as those containing database credentials, potentially leading to a full takeover of the website and its data. This issue affects all versions of the theme up to and including 1.10, and there is currently no official fix available from the developer.
Technical details
A Local File Inclusion (LFI) vulnerability exists in the ThemeREX Preservation theme for WordPress through version 1.10. The flaw stems from improper control of filenames in PHP 'include' or 'require' statements (CWE-98), allowing an unauthenticated remote attacker to include arbitrary files from the local server. While the attack complexity is rated as high, successful exploitation could allow an attacker to read sensitive system files or execute code if combined with other techniques like log poisoning. As of the advisory date, no official patch has been released by the vendor; users are advised to seek alternative mitigations or themes.
Affected products
- ThemeREX Preservation <= 1.10
Timeline
- 2025-10-31: other: Vulnerability reported by researcher Bonds
- 2026-05-26: advisory: Patchstack published vulnerability details
- 2026-06-17: disclosed: CVE published to NVD