Attack Vectors

WP Hotel Booking (slug: wp-hotel-booking) versions ≤ 2.2.9 contain a High-severity Local File Inclusion vulnerability (CVE-2024-51582, CVSS 8.8). This issue can be exploited by an authenticated user with Contributor-level access or higher.

From a business perspective, the most common real-world path to exploitation is not “random hackers,” but unexpected access inside your WordPress environment: a compromised contributor account, an overly broad role assignment to a vendor/agency, shared credentials, or an attacker who first gains low-level access through phishing and then escalates impact through this plugin flaw.

Once the attacker has an eligible login, they may be able to include files from the server in a way that can lead to exposing sensitive data or, in certain scenarios, executing code (for example, when “safe” uploads can be abused and then included).

Security Weakness

This vulnerability is a Local File Inclusion (LFI) weakness in WP Hotel Booking where an attacker can influence which file the site loads. In affected versions (up to and including 2.2.9), this can allow an authenticated attacker (Contributor+) to include arbitrary files located on the server.

The risk becomes especially serious because file inclusion issues can sometimes be chained with other conditions (such as permissive upload capabilities or exposed server files) to bypass intended access controls, read sensitive content, or run PHP code contained in included files. The official record is CVE-2024-51582, with additional details referenced by Wordfence.

Remediation: Update WP Hotel Booking to version 2.3.0 or newer (patched). If you have compliance obligations, document the update, confirm the plugin version in inventory, and ensure role assignments (Contributor/Author/Editor) align with the minimum required access.

Technical or Business Impacts

Business impacts can be immediate and measurable. Depending on what files are accessible and how your environment is configured, the outcomes may include exposure of confidential data (customer details, booking data, internal documents, logs), account takeover paths, and potentially site compromise if code execution is achieved.

Operational impacts may include website defacement, malware injection, SEO spam, redirects that damage campaign performance, loss of availability during incident response, and increased support burden for your marketing and customer service teams.

Financial and compliance impacts can include incident response costs, downtime-related revenue loss, reputational damage that depresses conversion rates, and regulatory or contractual exposure if personal data is accessed (e.g., breach notification requirements and audit findings).

Similar Attacks

Local File Inclusion and closely related path traversal flaws are frequently used to steal data or pivot into deeper compromise. Examples of similar vulnerabilities include:

CVE-2021-41773 (Apache HTTP Server path traversal / file disclosure)
CVE-2020-1938 “Ghostcat” (Apache Tomcat file read / inclusion via AJP)
CVE-2022-26134 (Atlassian Confluence injection leading to broad compromise)

While the products differ, the business lesson is consistent: file inclusion and related input-handling flaws can quickly escalate from a “limited” foothold to major data exposure or system compromise, especially when attackers already have (or can obtain) low-level credentials.