{"id":"CVE-2026-77203","title":"The Groups – Memberships and Access Control plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 4.6.0","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 ambien…","severity":"high","cvss":8.8,"cvssVector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H","cwe":["CWE-269"],"vendor":"itthinx","product":"Groups – Memberships and Access Control","affected":["groups_memberships_and_access_control <= 4.6.0"],"published":"2026-09-26","updated":"2026-09-26","sourceUpdated":"2026-09-26T23:16:35.700","source":"NVD","sourceUrl":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-77203","references":[{"url":"https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groups/tags/4.5.0/lib/views/class-groups-shortcodes.php#L463","label":"security@wordfence.com"},{"url":"https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groups/tags/4.5.0/lib/views/class-groups-shortcodes.php#L521","label":"security@wordfence.com"},{"url":"https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groups/tags/4.5.0/lib/views/class-groups-shortcodes.php#L586","label":"security@wordfence.com"},{"url":"https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groups/tags/4.5.0/lib/views/class-groups-shortcodes.php#L624","label":"security@wordfence.com"},{"url":"https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groups/tags/4.5.0/lib/wp/class-groups-wordpress.php#L248","label":"security@wordfence.com"},{"url":"https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3693123/groups","label":"security@wordfence.com"},{"url":"https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/e86dddc9-c1d3-426b-8ec7-2e56dc3c2379?source=cve","label":"security@wordfence.com"}],"tags":["nvd","cve.org"],"ssvc":{"exploitation":"none","automatable":"no","technicalImpact":"total","timestamp":"2026-09-26T22:44:23.567859Z"},"ingestedAt":"2026-09-26T18:36:42.662Z","slug":"CVE-2026-77203","body":"## Overview\n\nThe 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.\n\n## Remediation\n\nRefer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.","depth":"twilight","depthScore":48,"depthScoreParts":{"impact":48.4,"likelihood":0,"exploitation":0,"ransomware":0},"changes":[]}