Simple Membership registration failures can overwrite the primary Administrator
Simple Membership before 4.7.8 does not verify whether WordPress user creation failed before treating the returned value as a user ID for an account update. An unauthenticated attacker can force the failure path so the plugin updates the primary Administrator's account data, including its email address, then use the password-reset flow to take over that account.
- Component
- Simple Membership
- Plugin slug
simple-membership- Affected
- < 4.7.8
- Safe version
4.7.8- Published
- Aug 03, 2026
- Weakness
- CWE-862 — Missing Authorization
This CVE was published Aug 03, 2026 and is one of 34 known issues for this plugin.
Update, patch or deactivate.
Update Simple Membership to 4.7.8 or later. Verify the primary Administrator's email and credentials, reset privileged passwords, invalidate sessions and investigate registration, profile and password-reset activity.
A safe version is available, so updating to that version or later is the preferred remediation. If an immediate update is not practical, consider a targeted application patch or temporarily restricting the affected functionality.
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 Simple Membership WordPress plugin before 4.7.8 does not verify whether user creation failed during registration before using the returned value as a user ID to update an account, allowing unauthenticated attackers to overwrite the primary administrator's account data (including the email address) and take over that account through the password reset flow.
CVE / CNA vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:H