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Fencer Vulns
critical 10.0

CVE-2020-36157 json

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Roles.

published 2021-01-04 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-23735

cvss
10.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.0%
EPSS 3.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 87%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Roles. Due to the lack of filtering on the role parameter that could be supplied during the registration process, an attacker could supply the role parameter with a WordPress capability (or any custom Ultimate Member role) and effectively be granted those privileges.

Patch / fix

  • ultimatemember ultimate_member 2.1.12

Exploit prediction

3.00% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 87% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • wordfence.com https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/11/critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerabilities-affect-100k-sites-using-ultimate-member-plugin/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • wpscan.com https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/33f059c5-58e5-44b9-bb27-793c3cedef3b referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 10.0 CVSS:3.1/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:N/S:C/UI:N
CNA 3.1 10.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.