Account Switcher <= 1.0.2 — Authenticated (Subscriber+) Authentication Bypass to Privilege Escalation

Am I affected?

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

What to do

1. No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch Account Switcher to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Ren Voza.

The Account Switcher plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.0.2. This is due to the `rememberLogin` REST API endpoint using a loose comparison (`!=` instead of `!==`) for secret validation at `app/RestAPI.php:111`, combined with no validation that the secret is non-empty. When a target user has never used the "Remember me" feature, their `asSecret` user meta does not exist, causing `get_user_meta()` to return an empty string. An attacker can send an empty `secret` parameter, which passes the comparison (`'' != ''` is `false`), and the endpoint then calls `wp_set_auth_cookie()` for the target user. Additionally, all REST routes use `permission_callback => '__return_true'` with no capability checks. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to switch to any user account including Administrator, ultimately granting themselves full administrative privileges.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

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

Advisories & patches

• Advisorywordfence.com

Timeline

1. May 19, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity high, CVSS 8.8

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated