CVE-2026-18322
8.8 HIGHPublished 2026-08-05 · Updated 2026-08-05
AI risk analysis
- Summary
- The flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to exploit a privilege escalation vulnerability by submitting a crafted POST request with a nonce from a public subscription confirmation email, potentially creating an administrator account.
- Exploitability
- Exploitation is moderately difficult requiring access to a public subscription confirmation email and crafting a specific POST request.
- Blast radius
- If exploited, the attacker could gain full control over the WordPress site as an administrator with chosen credentials.
- Prioritized remediation
- Update to the latest version of the Smart Popup by Supsystic plugin or remove it entirely if not in use.
Analysis generated locally by qwen2.5:7b-instruct (no data left the box). AI-assisted — verify against primary sources before acting.
NVD description
The Smart Popup by Supsystic plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.12.0. This is due to a permission map collision in the `havePermissions()` function in `classes/frame.php`, where `array_merge()` overwrites the popup module's administrator-restricted method list with the base controller's value, silently removing `save` from protected actions; this is compounded by the subscription confirmation email embedding the same generic `pps_nonce` that the unauthenticated `wp_ajax_nopriv_save` endpoint accepts, and by the complete absence of any server-side role allowlist in `createWpSubscriber()`. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to submit a crafted POST request to `admin-ajax.php` using a nonce obtained from a public subscription confirmation email, setting `params[tpl][sub_wp_create_user_role]` to `administrator` via the exposed `popupControllerPps::save()` action, and then triggering the stored confirmation flow to create a persistent WordPress Administrator account with attacker-chosen credentials.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weaknesses
CWE-269
All references
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/classes/frame.php#L180
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/popup/models/popup.php#L316
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/subscribe/models/subscribe.php#L292
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/subscribe/models/subscribe.php#L358
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/subscribe/models/subscribe.php#L440
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?sfp_email=&sfph_mail=&reponame=&new=3629986%40popup-by-supsystic%2Ftrunk%2Fmodules%2Fsubscribe%2Fmodels%2Fsubscribe.php&old=3628131%40popup-by-supsystic%2Ftrunk%2Fmodules%2Fsubscribe%2Fmodels%2Fsubscribe.php&sfp_email=&sfph_mail=
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/835579b0-8a96-40fa-a6a3-30571a0a1d0a?source=cve
Source data: NVD (nvd.nist.gov), public domain. Exploit-DB.ai adds local AI analysis for defensive use only.