CVE-2020-36157

critical

Description

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Roles. Due to the lack of filtering on the role parameter that could be supplied during the registration process, an attacker could supply the role parameter with a WordPress capability (or any custom Ultimate Member role) and effectively be granted those privileges.

References

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

https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/33f059c5-58e5-44b9-bb27-793c3cedef3b

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: 0.01047