Description

The Cool Media Filter WordPress plugin through 1.0.1 does not perform any capability or nonce check when updating the capabilities of a role, allowing any authenticated user, such as a subscriber, to grant their own role administrator capabilities and take over the site.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "8.8",
  "pubDate": "2026-11-06T06:16:44.363Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-11-06T06:16:44.363Z",
  "executiveSummary": "The Cool Media Filter WordPress plugin through version 1.0.1 is susceptible to a critical privilege escalation vulnerability. The vulnerability arises from an improper access control implementation within the plugin's role-management functionality. Specifically, the plugin fails to implement mandatory security measures—namely, capability checks and nonces—when processing requests to modify WordPress user roles.\nThis design flaw allows any authenticated user, including those with minimal privileges such as the 'subscriber' role, to invoke functions intended for administrative use. By manipulating the parameters of these requests, an attacker can programmatically modify the capabilities associated with their own user role. The impact of this vulnerability is total site compromise, as an attacker can elevate their own privileges to 'administrator' status, gaining full control over the WordPress instance, including the ability to execute arbitrary code, modify content, and access sensitive data. Given the lack of requirements for administrative tokens or authorization, the exploitation is trivial and poses an extreme risk to the integrity and confidentiality of the affected WordPress site.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability originates from a lack of secure authorization logic in the Cool Media Filter plugin's role-updating routine. In WordPress, critical administrative actions—particularly those involving the modification of user capabilities via functions like 'get_role()' and 'add_cap()'—must be wrapped in strict server-side validation to ensure the requesting user possesses 'manage_options' or equivalent administrative capabilities.\nThe root cause is the absence of a 'current_user_can()' check within the plugin's handler responsible for role adjustments. Furthermore, the absence of a unique, cryptographically secure nonce means the endpoint is not protected against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) or direct unauthorized invocation. An authenticated attacker can craft a HTTP POST request targeted at the vulnerable endpoint, identifying the parameters used to map roles to specific capabilities.\nThe attack flow follows a predictable pattern: First, the attacker authenticates as a low-privileged user (e.g., a subscriber). Second, the attacker discovers the specific endpoint or action hook utilized by the Cool Media Filter plugin for its role-management features. Third, the attacker initiates a request to the plugin handler, injecting parameters designed to append administrative capabilities (such as 'manage_options', 'activate_plugins', or 'edit_users') to their existing subscriber role. Since the plugin fails to verify the session's authorization level, the server-side code executes the role modification, effectively upgrading the attacker's account permissions.\nUpon successful execution, the attacker’s session is implicitly granted the privileges defined by the injected capabilities. This allows the attacker to bypass the WordPress dashboard's standard security barriers. Post-exploitation, the attacker can leverage the newly acquired administrative access to install malicious plugins (webshells), create additional rogue administrator accounts for persistence, or exfiltrate the entire site database. The vulnerability is present in all versions through 1.0.1, and because the endpoint is exposed globally once the plugin is active, it remains highly accessible to any authenticated user on the platform."
}