# CVE-2026-13405: Royal Elementor Addons remote code execution in widget builder

Source: https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-13405-royal-elementor-addons-remote-code-execution-in-widget-builder  
Publisher: Junglewise Threat Intelligence, https://junglewise.ai/threats  
Published: 2026-08-20. Updated: 2026-09-25  
License: CC BY 4.0 with a link back

CVE-2026-13405 · Severity: medium · CVSS 6.6 · Published 2026-08-20

Royal Elementor Addons is a popular WordPress plugin that provides additional widgets for Elementor page builder. On WordPress Multisite installations, administrators of individual subsites can exploit improper sanitization in the widget builder to inject and execute arbitrary PHP code, compromising all sites on the network and the underlying server infrastructure.

## Quick answers

**Is CVE-2026-13405 exploited in the wild?** No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-13405 being exploited in the wild.

**How severe is CVE-2026-13405?** Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 6.6, published 20 August 2026.

**Which products and versions are affected?** Royal Elementor Addons Royal Elementor Addons before 1.7.1066.

**Is there a fix for CVE-2026-13405?** A patch was published on 2026-08-20: Fixed in version 1.7.1066 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.

**How is CVE-2026-13405 attacked?** It is attacked over the network, in a web application.

**Am I affected by CVE-2026-13405?** Check whether anything you run is named in the advisory. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

## Technical details

The plugin fails to properly sanitize user-supplied markup when custom widgets are created via the widget-builder REST endpoint before writing it to a PHP file that is later executed. The vulnerability exploits a single-pass str_replace() that strips PHP tags, allowing overlapping token sequences (e.g., "<<??=...??>>") to recombine into valid PHP short-echo blocks ("<?=...?>") that execute unconditionally. An attacker with manage_options capability (subsite administrator on Multisite) can craft a malicious widget, save it via an unauthenticated REST call using a wp-rest nonce, and trigger PHP execution by viewing any page containing that widget. This requires only WordPress Multisite and the plugin installed network-wide; no additional authentication beyond typical admin privileges is needed. The vulnerability was fixed in version 1.7.1066.

## Affected products

- Royal Elementor Addons Royal Elementor Addons before 1.7.1066

## Timeline

- 2026-08-18: disclosed
- 2026-08-20: patched: Fixed in version 1.7.1066

## References

- [https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/247be7fc-a49f-429e-875d-8649510c42b5/](https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/247be7fc-a49f-429e-875d-8649510c42b5/)