# Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery <= 4.5.5 - Unauthenticated Sensitive Information Exposure via Original Image Backups

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-2828
- **Plugin:** Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery (`nextgen-gallery`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/nextgen-gallery/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 4.5.6
- **Fixed in:** 4.5.6 (Update to 4.5.6 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 5.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-552
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Medium, affected versions Medium (as of 2026-11-10)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/nextgen-gallery
- **Fix released:** 2026-11-09
- **Published:** 2026-11-10
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2828/

## Description

The NextGEN Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Sensitive Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 4.5.5 due to original images being stored as web-accessible '_backup' files next to the gallery images at predictable URLs. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to download the unmodified original images, bypassing protections such as watermarking or resizing that the site owner applied to the published images.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2828/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/nextgen-gallery/tags/4.5.6/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2828/

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.