Strategic Overview
- Status
- Unpatched
- Affected Plugin
- User registration & user profile – UserPlus
- Affected Version
<= 2.0- CVSS
- 9.8Critical
- Weakness type
- CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
- CVE
CVE-2024-9518
At a glance
CVE-2024-9518 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the User registration & user profile WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.0. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed October 2024, reported by István Márton.
Vulnerability Overview
The UserPlus plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in versions up to, and including, 2.0 due to insufficient restriction on the 'form_actions' and 'userplus_update_user_profile' functions. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to specify their user role by supplying the 'role' parameter during a registration.
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 & user profile <= 2.0 carries this weakness at form_actions, 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for User registration & user profile yet, so installs running <= 2.0 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.
Remediation
No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.
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. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in User registration & user profile – UserPlus
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C