User Registration & Membership <= 4.1.1 - Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 4.1.2
- Affected Version
<= 4.1.1- CVSS
- 9.8Critical
- Weakness type
- CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
- CVE
CVE-2025-2563
At a glance
CVE-2025-2563 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the User Registration & Membership WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.1.1. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.1.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed March 2025, reported by wesley (wcraft).
Vulnerability Overview
The User Registration & Membership plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in versions up to, and including, 4.1.1. This is due to insufficient restrictions on role type in the 'prepare_members_data()' function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to create new user accounts with the 'administrator'' role.
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 privileges on the target site, 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
User Registration & Membership <= 4.1.1 carries this weakness at administrator, and reaching it takes no account at all. 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 User Registration & Membership the fix is 4.1.2: builds <= 4.1.1 are affected, anything from 4.1.2 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 4.1.2, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
This one needs no account at all, which puts it outside what login hardening can reach; WordSec's login security narrows the account-level paths around it, and the firewall is what inspects the request itself. None of that substitutes for the fix: User Registration & Membership 4.1.2 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in User Registration & Membership – Free & Paid Memberships, Subscriptions, Content Restriction, User Profile, Custom User Registration & Login Builder
- 9.9CVE-2023-3342: User Registration <= 3.0.2 Arbitrary File Upload
CVE-2023-3342 - 9.8CVE-2026-32488: User Registration & Membership RCE
CVE-2026-32488 - 8.8CVE-2024-2417: User Registration Authenticated (Subscriber+)
CVE-2024-2417 - 8.8CVE-2023-3343: User Registration <= 3.0.1 PHP Object Injection
CVE-2023-3343 - 8.8CVE-2022-3912: User Registration <= 2.2.4 Arbitrary File Upload
CVE-2022-3912 - 8.1CVE-2026-1779: User Registration & Membership Authentication Bypass
CVE-2026-1779 - 8.1CVE-2025-2594: User Registration & Membership Authentication Bypass
CVE-2025-2594 - 7.5CVE-2023-27459: User Registration <= 2.3.2.1 PHP Object Injection
CVE-2023-27459
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