CVE-2026-75927
The PublishPress Capabilities – User Role Editor, Access Permissions, User Capabilities, Admin Menus plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.50.0. This is due to the `addPluginCapabilities()` function unconditionally granting the Editor role all 15 `manage_capabilities_*` capabilities — including `manage_capabilities`, `manage_capabilities_roles`, `manage_capabilities_settings`, and `manage_capabilities_backup` — via a hard-coded `$eligible_roles = ['administrator', 'editor']` assignment that runs automatically on the first `admin_init` after plugin activation with no administrator opt-in, persisting the grants directly to the database. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with Editor-level access to elevate their privileges to a site-wide capability manager, enabling them to create, rename, and delete non-system roles, modify capabilities of non-administrator roles, restore role backups, and write arbitrary plugin options whose names begin with `cme_`, `capsman`, `pp_capabilities`, or `presspermit` via `update_option()`. The escalation stops short of full Administrator access, as WordPress's `map_meta_cap` layer still prevents the escalated Editor from granting administrator-only capabilities to other roles; however, all role-management and plugin-settings functionality gated solely on `manage_capabilities_*` capabilities remains fully accessible.
Scoring
- Severity
- HIGH
- CVSS base score
- 7.2
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CWE
- CWE-269
- Published
- 2026-09-09
- Last modified
- 2026-09-09
Affected products
- publishpress User Role Editor – PublishPress Capabilities: Access Control and User Roles
Weakness type
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