Over 100,000 WordPress Sites Exposed to RCE Through Tutor LMS Vulnerability
Wordfence disclosed CVE-2026-78175, an authenticated PHP object injection chain enabling RCE in Tutor LMS affecting 100,000+ WordPress sites; fixed in 4.0.8.
PHP Object Injection to RCE in Tutor LMS WordPress Plugin (≤ 4.0.7)
Tutor LMS, a WordPress eLearning plugin, suffers from a PHP object injection flaw (CWE-502) in the `tutor_save_withdraw_account` AJAX handler, which accepts attacker-controlled `withdraw_method_field` values with no capability check beyond a nonce and stores them via `update_user_meta()` in a way that corrupts serialized string lengths. An authenticated user with subscriber-level privileges (or an unauthenticated attacker, if open user registration is enabled) who holds a valid nonce can therefore make `unserialize()` over-read into attacker-controlled bytes and inject an arbitrary serialized object. By chaining the plugin's bundled PayPal Composer autoloader with the `GuzzleHttp\Cookie\FileCookieJar` gadget, the attacker achieves remote code execution, writing attacker-controlled content to an attacker-specified filename on the server. All sites running Tutor LMS up to and including version 4.0.7 with the monetization feature enabled are affected. No public proof-of-concept, CISA KEV listing, or confirmed in-the-wild exploitation is known at this time.
What to do: Update Tutor LMS to a release newer than 4.0.7 as soon as a patched version is published (no fixed version number is confirmed in the available data). As interim mitigation, disable the plugin's monetization/withdraw feature, restrict or close open user registration, and review `update_user_meta()`-stored withdraw account data for tampered serialized values. Sites that enabled monetization and registration should also audit for unexpected files written by web-server users during the exposure window.
| Product | Affected |
|---|---|
| Themeum Tutor LMS – eLearning and online course solution plugin for WordPress | All versions up to and including 4.0.7 |
Order-of-magnitude estimate by the model from install counts, market share and public scan data it knows; verify before quoting.
The Tutor LMS – eLearning and online course solution plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to PHP Object Injection in all versions up to, and including, 4.0.7 via the `withdraw_method_field` parameter of the `tutor_save_withdraw_account` AJAX handler. This is due to the handler lacking any capability or role check, relying solely on a nonce, while also passing attacker-supplied values through `esc_sql()`, which replaces every `%` character with a 66-byte HMAC placeholder token before the data is serialized and stored via `update_user_meta()`; when the meta is later retrieved, the placeholder is collapsed back to a single `%`, leaving serialized string length declarations 65 bytes greater than the actual content, and because array keys originate from entirely unescaped POST field names, `unserialize()` over-reads into attacker-controlled bytes, allowing injection of an arbitrary serialized object stream. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to achieve remote code execution on the server by triggering the `GuzzleHttp\Cookie\FileCookieJar` POP chain, reachable via the `spl_autoload_register` loader in `TUTOR\RestAPI` which loads the plugin's own bundled PayPal Composer autoloader, writing attacker-controlled content to an attacker-specified filename. This has an unauthenticated pathway when user registration is enabled, which is common for students and teachers to register, and it requires the monetization feature to be enabled.
Wordfence disclosed CVE-2026-78175, an authenticated PHP object injection chain enabling RCE in Tutor LMS affecting 100,000+ WordPress sites; fixed in 4.0.8.
A CVSS 8.8 PHP object injection flaw (CVE-2026-78175) in Tutor LMS exposes 100,000+ WordPress sites to subscriber-level remote code execution; patched in 4.0.8.
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