Groups <= 4.6.0 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Privilege Escalation via 'groups_join' Shortcode

Summary

The Groups – Memberships and Access Control plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 4.6.0. This is due to the groups_join() function deriving group-join eligibility from the ambient post's author capabilities via the global $post->post_author rather than from the currently authenticated user's own capabilities, while simultaneously minting and returning a valid groups-join-data hash and WordPress nonce for the caller in the same response — eliminating all authorization barriers to self-enrollment. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to enroll themselves into any group including privileged groups carrying the groups_admin_groups capability, and to subsequently create and join a group containing every registered WordPress capability, effectively escalating their privileges to Administrator. Exploitation requires the attacker to supply an Administrator-authored post ID via the post_ID parameter of the authenticated wp_ajax_parse_media_shortcode handler in order to establish the privileged ambient post context used by the flawed authorization check.

Timeline

1. Sep 26, 2026, 5:28 PM UTCCVE published
2. Sep 26, 2026, 10:44 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total

3. Sep 26, 2026, 10:51 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• itthinx Groups – Memberships and Access Control

  through 4.6.0

References 7