🛡️ CVE-2026-15992

🟠 CVSS 8.8 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-269 NVD
8.8
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

The WP Password Policy plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to and including 3.7.1. This is due to missing authorization checks and nonce verification in the get_user() function of the Module_Password_Hint class, which unconditionally calls WP_User::set_role() with the attacker-supplied role parameter on any account resolved via $_POST['user_login'], without confirming the requesting user holds the capability to assign roles. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to escalate their own privileges to Administrator by submitting a crafted POST request — with action set to createuser and role set to administrator — to the password-reset form endpoint. The vulnerable code path is reachable via the password_hint filter hooked during the WordPress password-reset form render, meaning an attacker need only possess a valid password-reset cookie to reach the sink.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

Weakness class

CVE-2026-15992 is classified as CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management. Privileges are assigned, dropped or restored incorrectly, leaving an actor with more access than intended.

Affected software

CVE-2026-15992 is recorded against 1 package.

  • unknown

Timeline and source

Published on 28 July 2026 and last revised on 29 July 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from NVD.

References

plugins.trac.wordpress.org
plugins.trac.wordpress.org
www.wordfence.com

Details

Severity HIGH
CVSS Score 8.8
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE CWE-269
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2026-07-28
Updated 2026-08-11
Modified 2026-07-29
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
unknown

Similar Threats

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