CVE-2026-16635
Description
The Pronamic Pay plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 10.1.0 This is due to the `maybe_update_user_role()` function passing an attacker-controlled Gravity Forms field value (`$lead[$feed->user_role_field_id]`) directly into `WP_User::set_role()` without any allowlist validation, capability comparison, or permission check to constrain which roles can be assigned. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to escalate their own WordPress account to Administrator by tampering with the role field value in a form submission. Exploitation requires that an administrator has already configured a Pronamic Pay payment feed in Gravity Forms with the **Update User Role** option enabled and mapped to a form field; once that configuration is in place, no further preconditions exist to prevent an authenticated attacker from exploiting this vulnerability.
Predictions
Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.
Mitigations
No mitigations published for this CVE yet.
The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.
Propose a mitigation on Community Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here withsource_tier=community-verified.
References
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L144
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L376
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L379
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/pronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php#L988
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3630401/pronamic-ideal/trunk/packages/wp-pay-extensions/gravityforms/src/Extension.php
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?old_path=%2Fpronamic-ideal/tags/10.1.0&new_path=%2Fpronamic-ideal/tags/10.2.0
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d42b8856-e5d0-4122-98a4-8c959832b271?source=cve
CWEs
CWE-269
Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.
Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.