# MasterStudy LMS WordPress Plugin – for Online Courses and Education <= 3.7.55 - Unauthenticated Limited Local File Inclusion via 'params' Parameter

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-1835
- **Plugin:** MasterStudy LMS WordPress Plugin – for Online Courses and Education (`masterstudy-lms-learning-management-system`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/masterstudy-lms-learning-management-system/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 3.7.56
- **Fixed in:** 3.7.56 (Update to 3.7.56 or later.)
- **Severity:** High 8.2 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-98
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Medium, affected versions Low (as of 2026-10-28)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/masterstudy-lms-learning-management-system
- **Fix released:** 2026-10-27
- **Published:** 2026-10-28
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-1835/

## Description

The MasterStudy LMS WordPress Plugin plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Limited Local File Inclusion via the 'params' parameter of the stm_lms_load_modal AJAX action in all versions up to, and including, 3.7.55. This is due to the action being registered for unauthenticated users with a nonce printed on every front-end page, and the decoded 'params' array being passed to extract() in STM_LMS_Templates::load_lms_template(), so a 'template_name' key overwrites the template being loaded. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to include and render any PHP template in the plugin's (or theme's) stm-lms-templates directory with variables they choose. For example, they can render the course player lesson template for any lesson ID and read paid or unpublished lesson content. Directory traversal outside the template directory is blocked.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-1835/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/masterstudy-lms-learning-management-system/tags/3.7.56/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/masterstudy-lms-learning-management-system/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-1835/

License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Free to use, share and adapt, also commercially, if you credit WPSec and link to this advisory.