CVE-2026-12165

Contest Gallery <= 30.0.2 - Authenticated (Author+) Privilege Escalation via 'RegistryUserRole' Parameter

State
Published
Severity
8.8 High
Published
Jun 17, 2026
Updated
Jun 17, 2026
Reserved
Jun 12, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

The Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 30.0.2 via the `RegistryUserRole` parameter. This is due to the plugin's admin menu being registered at the `edit_posts` capability level — granting Contributor-level users access to the plugin's admin pages and a valid `cg_admin` nonce — while the option-saving handler in `change-options-and-sizes.php` performs no `current_user_can()` capability check beyond `check_admin_referer('cg_admin')`, and the `RegistryUserRole` value is processed only through `sanitize_text_field()` and `htmlentities()` without restriction to an allowlist of permitted role names. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with author-level access and above, to overwrite the plugin's stored `RegistryUserRole` option with `administrator`, which the `cg_create_wp_user_from_google_user` function then reads back from the `contest_gal1ery_registry_and_login_options` database table without any allowlist validation and passes directly to `wp_update_user()`, effectively promoting a newly registered Google sign-in account to Administrator.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.18.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HWordfence

Weaknesses

  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management

Affected Products

ProductVersions
Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripecontest-gallery
  • 30.0.2 and earlierAffected

References

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