Description
The Groups – Memberships and Access Control plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 4.6.0. This is due to the groups_join() function deriving group-join eligibility from the ambient post's author capabilities via the global $post->post_author rather than from the currently authenticated user's own capabilities, while simultaneously minting and returning a valid groups-join-data hash and WordPress nonce for the caller in the same response — eliminating all authorization barriers to self-enrollment. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to enroll themselves into any group including privileged groups carrying the groups_admin_groups capability, and to subsequently create and join a group containing every registered WordPress capability, effectively escalating their privileges to Administrator. Exploitation requires the attacker to supply an Administrator-authored post ID via the post_ID parameter of the authenticated wp_ajax_parse_media_shortcode handler in order to establish the privileged ambient post context used by the flawed authorization check.
Published: 2026-09-26
Score: 8.8 High
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

Analysis and contextual insights are available on OpenCVE Cloud.

Remediation

No vendor fix or workaround currently provided.

Additional remediation guidance may be available on OpenCVE Cloud.

Tracking

Sign in to view the affected projects.

Advisories

No advisories yet.

History

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 23:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'total'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Sat, 26 Sep 2026 23:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Itthinx
Itthinx groups
Wordpress-extensions
Wordpress-extensions groups
Vendors & Products Itthinx
Itthinx groups
Wordpress-extensions
Wordpress-extensions groups

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description The Groups – Memberships and Access Control plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 4.6.0. This is due to the groups_join() function deriving group-join eligibility from the ambient post's author capabilities via the global $post->post_author rather than from the currently authenticated user's own capabilities, while simultaneously minting and returning a valid groups-join-data hash and WordPress nonce for the caller in the same response — eliminating all authorization barriers to self-enrollment. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to enroll themselves into any group including privileged groups carrying the groups_admin_groups capability, and to subsequently create and join a group containing every registered WordPress capability, effectively escalating their privileges to Administrator. Exploitation requires the attacker to supply an Administrator-authored post ID via the post_ID parameter of the authenticated wp_ajax_parse_media_shortcode handler in order to establish the privileged ambient post context used by the flawed authorization check.
Title Groups <= 4.6.0 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Privilege Escalation via 'groups_join' Shortcode
Weaknesses CWE-269
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 8.8, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H'}


Subscriptions

Itthinx Groups
Wordpress-extensions Groups
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: Wordfence

Published:

Updated: 2026-09-26T22:51:17.071Z

Reserved: 2026-08-20T18:03:15.864Z

Link: CVE-2026-77203

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-09-26T22:48:08.556Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-09-26T18:16:29.917

Modified: 2026-09-26T23:16:35.700

Link: CVE-2026-77203

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-09-26T22:28:18Z

Weaknesses
  • CWE-269

    Improper Privilege Management