An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Authenticated Privilege Escalation via Profile Updat…

published 2021-01-04 5y ago modified 2026-06-17 4mo ago also EUVD-2020-23734

cvss: 9.9; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 2.1%; EPSS 2.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 81%
public exploits: 0; none known

An issue was discovered in the Ultimate Member plugin before 2.1.12 for WordPress, aka Authenticated Privilege Escalation via Profile Update. Any user with wp-admin access to the profile.php page could supply the parameter um-role with a value set to any role (e.g., Administrator) during a profile update, and effectively escalate their privileges.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

ultimatemember ultimate_member 2.1.12

Is CVE-2020-36156 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

2.06% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 81% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

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/dd4c4ece-7206-4788-8747-f0c0f3ab0a53 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	9.9	CVSS:3.1/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:L/S:C/UI:N
CNA	3.1	9.9	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.1	8.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	6.5	AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness

CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management

Technology feeds

WordPress rss critical rss

References

wordfence.com /blog/2020/11/critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerabilities-affect-100k-sites-using-ultimate-member-plugin/
exploit, third-party-advisory
wpscan.com /vulnerability/dd4c4ece-7206-4788-8747-f0c0f3ab0a53
exploit, third-party-advisory
wordpress.org /plugins/ultimate-member/#developers
release-notes, third-party-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2020-36156
NVD CVE-2020-36156

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.