AI analysis
Elementor Pro, the paid add-on to the widely used Elementor page builder for WordPress, is affected by an unrestricted upload of files with dangerous types (CWE-434) that can be triggered by unauthenticated attackers. An attacker sends a crafted upload request to the plugin's vulnerable endpoint and can upload a dangerous file — notably a PHP file — which the web server then executes, yielding remote code execution on the hosting account. The critical 9.0 CVSS score with scope change (S:C) and high impact across confidentiality, integrity and availability reflects that code execution lets an attacker take over the site, plant backdoors, modify content and potentially affect the underlying host. All Elementor Pro releases up to and including 4.2.1 are affected, meaning every site that has not yet updated to a fixed version is in scope. The flaw is not yet listed in CISA KEV and no public proof-of-concept is cataloged, and EPSS assigns a 2.4% 30-day exploitation probability (83rd percentile), but news reports already document hundreds of thousands of exploit attempts against Elementor Pro and Super Forms RCE flaws, so it should be treated as exploited in the wild.
What to do: Update Elementor Pro to the latest patched release (any version after 4.2.1 — the data does not name a fixed build, so apply the newest available update). Until then, use WAF rules to block unauthenticated upload attempts to Elementor endpoints, restrict or disable modules that accept file uploads from unauthenticated users, and hunt for unexpected .php files under wp-content/uploads plus new admin users or modified content as signs of compromise. The high attack complexity (AC:H) means not every install may be exploitable, but patching should be treated as urgent given the reported mass exploitation.
Affected
| Elementor Pro (WordPress plugin) | All versions from n/a through 4.2.1 (i.e., every release up to and including 4.2.1) |
Estimated exposure
mass≈1,000,000+ WordPress sites (Elementor Pro is the paid add-on to a page builder whose free core has 10M+ active installs) — Elementor's free companion plugin has 10M+ active WordPress installs and Elementor Pro is commonly estimated at roughly one million or more paid users, and the hundreds of thousands of logged exploit attempts are consistent with a very…
Order-of-magnitude estimate by the model from install counts, market share and public scan data it knows; verify before quoting.