CVE-2020-36155

critical

Description

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Meta. An attacker could supply an array parameter for sensitive metadata, such as the wp_capabilities user meta that defines a user's role. During the registration process, submitted registration details were passed to the update_profile function, and any metadata was accepted, e.g., wp_capabilities[administrator] for Administrator access.

References

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/11/critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerabilities-affect-100k-sites-using-ultimate-member-plugin/

https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/cf13b0f8-5815-4d27-a276-5eff8985fc0b

https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-member/#developers

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2021-01-04

Updated: 2026-06-17

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 7.5

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Severity: High

CVSS v3

Base Score: 9.8

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity: Critical

EPSS

EPSS: 0.08975