Simple History – Track, Log, and Audit WordPress Changes <= 5.26.0 — Authenticated (Subscriber+) Account Takeover via Missing Authorization on Event Reaction Endpoint

Am I affected?

• Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under Simple History – Track, Log, and Audit WordPress Changes.
• No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.

What to do

1. Update to version 5.27.0, or a newer patched version
2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
3. Watch Simple History – Track, Log, and Audit WordPress Changes to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to lhking.

The Simple History – Track, Log, and Audit WordPress Changes plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to authenticated (Subscriber+) account takeover in all versions up to, and including, 5.26.0 via the event reaction endpoints (react_to_event() / unreact_to_event()). The endpoints register get_items_permissions_check() as their permission_callback, which only verifies the requester is logged in and does not enforce the per-logger capability checks normally applied by Log_Query. As a result, a Subscriber-level user can POST to /wp-json/simple-history/v1/events/<id>/react with the _fields=context query parameter and read the full context of any Simple History event — including SimpleUserLogger entries that record the full password-reset email body (reset URL with the reset key) for any user. The attacker triggers a password reset for an administrator via the lost-password form, brute-forces recent event IDs through the reaction endpoint to read the resulting user_requested_password_reset_link event, extracts the reset key from context.message, and completes the password reset to take over the administrator account. Exploitation requires an administrator to have first enabled the experimental features option (simple_history_experimental_features_enabled), which is not the default.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

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

Advisories & patches

• Advisorywordfence.com

Related CVEs

Timeline

1. May 29, 2026

   CVE published

   Severity high, CVSS 7.5

2. Nov 13, 2026

   Record last updated