ProfilePress <= 4.16.17 - Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 4.16.18
- Affected Plugin
- Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress
- Affected Version
<= 4.16.17- CVSS
- 9.8Critical
- Weakness type
- CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
- CVE
CVE-2026-12497
At a glance
CVE-2026-12497 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.16.17. 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 4.16.18; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2026, reported by Muni Nitish Kumar Yaddala.
Vulnerability Overview
The Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 4.16.17. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to register as higher privileged roles when the registration form has been misconfigured.
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
Reaching this weakness in Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content <= 4.16.17 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 Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content the fix is 4.16.18: builds <= 4.16.17 are affected, anything from 4.16.18 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 4.16.18, 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: Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content 4.16.18 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 Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress
- 9.8CVE-2021-34624: ProfilePress 3.0 - 3.1.3 Arbitrary File Upload
CVE-2021-34624 - 9.8CVE-2021-34623: User Registration Privilege Escalation
CVE-2021-34623 - 8.8CVE-2026-13352: Paid Membership Plugin Limited Unsafe File Upload
CVE-2026-13352 - 8.1CVE-2026-3453: ProfilePress IDOR
CVE-2026-3453 - 7.3CVE-2026-19848: Paid Membership Plugin Arbitrary Shortcode Execution
CVE-2026-19848 - 7.3CVE-2023-41954: ProfilePress <= 4.13.1 Limited Privilege Escalation
CVE-2023-41954 - 7.2CVE-2022-47444: ProfilePress <= 4.5.3 Cross-Site Scripting
CVE-2022-47444 - 7.2CVE-2023-23830: ProfilePress <= 4.5.4 Stored Cross-Site Scripting
CVE-2023-23830
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