Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme <= 6.7.16 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Privilege Escalation via AJAX
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 6.7.17
- Affected Theme
- Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme
- Affected Version
<= 6.7.16- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
- CVE
CVE-2026-14805
At a glance
CVE-2026-14805 is a high-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme WordPress theme, affecting versions <= 6.7.16. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Subscriber level or above. The issue is fixed in version 6.7.17; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2026, reported by lhking.
Vulnerability Overview
The Consulting theme for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in versions up to, and including, 6.7.16. This is due to a combination of two flaws: (1) the masterstudy_ms_stm_set_discard_transient AJAX endpoint in admin/admin-notices/classes/STMHandler.php accepts an arbitrary transient key without capability checks or nonce validation, and (2) the developer access login mechanism in admin/classes/stm-theme-support.php authenticates users based on a transient value without proper cryptographic validation when in legacy string mode. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to set the stm_developer_access_token transient to a known value (1), then authenticate as any existing user including administrators by visiting a specially crafted URL, thereby achieving full privilege escalation to administrator.
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 Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme <= 6.7.16 takes an account at Subscriber level or above. 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 Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme the fix is 6.7.17: builds <= 6.7.16 are affected, anything from 6.7.17 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 6.7.17, 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: Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme 6.7.17 closes this, and updating the theme is the step that ends it.
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme
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