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Controlled Admin Access < 1.5.6 — Privilege Escalation

CVE-2021-4360Published · Updated

Action summary

Affected: <1.5.6Update to 1.5.6 or newer

All remediation steps
Watch plugin
Severity
Critical9.9
CVSS
9.9
CVSS 3.1 · CNA (Wordfence)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
What does this vector mean?
AV:N Attack vector
Network
AC:L Attack complexity
Low
PR:L Privileges required
Low
UI:N User interaction
None
S:C Scope
Changed
C:H Confidentiality
High
I:H Integrity
High
A:H Availability
High
Weakness
CWE-284 Improper Access Control
Required access
Unknown
Exploit prediction (EPSS)
No score
CISA KEV
Not listed
On this page8

Am I affected?

Controlled Admin Access controlled-admin-access

  1. Affected< 1.5.6
  2. Patched in1.5.6

Update to 1.5.6 or newer.

You are affected if you run < 1.5.6. Version 1.5.6 and later are not affected by this issue.

  • Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under Controlled Admin Access.
  • No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.

What to do

  1. Update to version 1.5.6, or a newer patched version
  2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
  3. Watch Controlled Admin Access to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Jerome Bruandet.

The Controlled Admin Access plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in versions up to, and including, 1.5.5 by not properly restricting access to the configuration page. This makes it possible for attackers to create a new administrator role with unrestricted access.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

No public proof-of-concept or detection template is known for this vulnerability.

Advisories & patches

More in Controlled Admin Access

All 2
More vulnerabilities in Controlled Admin Access
SeverityVulnerabilityCVEPublished
Critical9.8Improper Access Control & Privilege Escalation
<1.5.2Update to 1.5.2
CVE-2021-24215

Timeline

  1. CVE published

    Severity critical, CVSS 9.9

  2. Record last updated

Sources & licenses

Wordfence record
Vulnerability data
Wordfence Intelligence. Copyright 2012-2026 Defiant Inc. Licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0.
CVE® identifiers
Copyright 1999-2026 The MITRE Corporation. Used under the CVE Program. CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.
CVSS / CWE
National Vulnerability Database (NVD), shown unmodified. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
VulnCrest content
Summary, remediation guidance and page layout © VulnCrest. Not sourced from NVD.

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