Import and export users and customers: Privilege escalation or authentication bypass
Import and export users and customers is affected by privilege escalation or authentication bypass. Exploitation requires an authenticated subscriber account. A successful request can grant permissions or access that the caller should not possess. The published affected range is <= 2.0.8.
- Component
- Import and export users and customers
- Plugin slug
import-users-from-csv-with-meta- Affected
- <= 2.0.8
- Safe version
- See mitigation notes
- Published
- May 02, 2026
This CVE was published May 02, 2026 and is one of 21 known issues for this plugin.
Update, patch or deactivate.
This archive could not verify a fixed version from the official author release notes reviewed on 2026-10-13. Disable the affected feature or component where practical until remediation for the deployed configuration is established. Official author release notes: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/import-users-from-csv-with-meta/.
No confirmed safe version is listed. Consider a vendor-supported patch or temporarily restricting the affected functionality while you assess the risk.
Deactivate only when warranted by your risk profile, or when advised by your hosting provider in the limited circumstances where the vulnerability cannot otherwise be mitigated. If you’re unsure which action is appropriate, contact Fused or your hosting provider for guidance.
Technical description
The Import and export users and customers plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to and including 2.0.8 via the `save_extra_user_profile_fields()` function. This is due to an incomplete blocklist that correctly restricts capability meta keys for the primary site (e.g., `wp_capabilities`, `wp_user_level`) but fails to block the equivalent meta keys for any other subsite in a WordPress Multisite network (e.g., `wp_2_capabilities`, `wp_2_user_level`), allowing these keys to pass the `in_array()` check and be written directly to user meta via `update_user_meta()`. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to escalate their privileges to Administrator on any subsite within the Multisite network by submitting a crafted profile update to `/wp-admin/profile.php`. Exploitation requires that an administrator has previously imported a CSV file containing multisite-prefixed capability column headers and has enabled the 'Show fields in profile?' option, which causes those keys to be stored in the `acui_columns` option and exposed as editable fields on the user profile page.
CVE / CNA vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Primary and upstream sources
- NVD record for CVE-2026-7641
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- WordPress upstream reference plugins.trac.wordpress.org
- Wordfence advisory wordfence.com