CVE-2026-16635

high

Description

The Pronamic Pay plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 10.1.0 This is due to the `maybe_update_user_role()` function passing an attacker-controlled Gravity Forms field value (`$lead[$feed->user_role_field_id]`) directly into `WP_User::set_role()` without any allowlist validation, capability comparison, or permission check to constrain which roles can be assigned. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to escalate their own WordPress account to Administrator by tampering with the role field value in a form submission. Exploitation requires that an administrator has already configured a Pronamic Pay payment feed in Gravity Forms with the **Update User Role** option enabled and mapped to a form field; once that configuration is in place, no further preconditions exist to prevent an authenticated attacker from exploiting this vulnerability.

References

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d42b8856-e5d0-4122-98a4-8c959832b271?source=cve

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?old_path=%2Fpronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0&new_path=%2Fpronamic-ideal/tags/10.2.0

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3630401/pronamic-ideal/trunk/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L988

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L379

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L376

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L144

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-08-01

Updated: 2026-08-01

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 9

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

Severity: High

CVSS v3

Base Score: 8.8

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

Severity: High