CVE-2020-36156

Ultimate Member <= 2.1.11 - Authenticated Privilege Escalation via Profile Update

2020-11-09 00:00
Chloe Chamberland

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.1.12
Affected Plugin
Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin
Affected Version
< 2.1.12
CVSS
9.9Critical
Weakness type
CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
CVE
CVE-2020-36156
View all Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2020-36156 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the Ultimate Member WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 2.1.12. It carries a CVSS score of 9.9 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires an authenticated account. The issue is fixed in version 2.1.12; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2020, reported by Chloe Chamberland.

Vulnerability Overview

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Authenticated Privilege Escalation via Profile Update. Any user with wp-admin access to the profile.php page could supply the parameter um-role with a value set to any role (e.g., Administrator) during a profile update, and effectively escalate their privileges.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management

Reaching this weakness in Ultimate Member < 2.1.12 takes any authenticated account. Improper privilege management means the code lets an account end up with capabilities its role should not have.

It converts a low-privileged account into an administrative one, which makes every other restriction on the site irrelevant. For Ultimate Member the fix is 2.1.12: builds < 2.1.12 are affected, anything from 2.1.12 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.1.12, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. None of that substitutes for the fix: Ultimate Member 2.1.12 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-36156https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/f3805936-675e-474f-a3f7-acea69bd72f0https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-36156

Related records

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