CVE-2026-9018

high

Published 2026-05-22 · Modified 2026-05-22

💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

8.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.8

Description

The Easy Elements for Elementor – Addons & Website Templates plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.4.5 via the `easyel_handle_register()` function. This is due to the `wp_ajax_nopriv_eel_register` AJAX handler iterating the attacker-controlled `custom_meta` POST array and writing every supplied key-value pair to the newly created user's meta via `update_user_meta()` without any key whitelist or blocklist, allowing the `wp_capabilities` user meta key to be overwritten after `wp_insert_user()` has already assigned a safe role. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to register a new account with full administrator-level privileges by supplying `custom_meta[wp_capabilities][administrator]=1`. Exploitation requires that user registration is enabled on the site and that at least one page exposes the Login/Register widget, which publishes the required `easy_elements_nonce` into the page DOM where it can be retrieved by any unauthenticated visitor via a simple GET request.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

92%

Patch ETA

—

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 with source_tier=community-verified.

References

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.