Executive brief
WP Directory Kit is a WordPress plugin for creating business directories. The plugin fails to properly verify permissions on a contact message retrieval function, allowing any logged-in user to see private messages and sensitive contact data (email addresses, phone numbers, names) belonging to other users. This undermines data privacy and could expose confidential business or personal information stored through the plugin.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a missing authorization check (CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information) in an authenticated AJAX action. The wdk_admin_action AJAX endpoint with page=wdk_messages and function=index does not verify user role, capability, or nonce tokens before returning contact message data. An attacker with any authenticated WordPress account (e.g., Subscriber role) can POST directly to admin-ajax.php and retrieve all stored messages with sender email, message content, and listing owner details. The flaw affects versions before 1.5.5 and is fixed in that release. No special privileges or interactions are required beyond account access.
Affected products
- WP Directory Kit WP Directory Kit before 1.5.5
Timeline
- 2026-08-03: disclosed
- 2026-08-08: advisory: CVE-2026-16590 published
- 2026-08-03: patched: Fixed in version 1.5.5