Skip to content
Fencer Intel
critical 10.0

CVE-2020-36155 json

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Meta.

published 5y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2020-23733

cvss
10.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
9.8%
EPSS 9.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 95%
public exploits
0
none known, plus a Nuclei check

Summary

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Meta. An attacker could supply an array parameter for sensitive metadata, such as the wp_capabilities user meta that defines a user's role. During the registration process, submitted registration details were passed to the update_profile function, and any metadata was accepted, e.g., wp_capabilities[administrator] for Administrator access.

Patch / fix

  • ultimatemember ultimate_member 2.1.12

Is CVE-2020-36155 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

Exploit prediction

9.82% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 95% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • Nuclei template Ultimate Member < 2.1.12 - Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation via User Meta nuclei detection template
  • wordfence.com https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/11/critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerabilities-affect-100k-sites-using-ultimate-member-plugin/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • wpscan.com https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/cf13b0f8-5815-4d27-a276-5eff8985fc0b referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 10.0 CVSS:3.1/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:N/S:C/UI:N
CNA 3.1 10.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.