Missing authorization in newscred Welcome Software Publishing
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- Security bypass
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- No fix listed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA. Impact type from CWE-862.
Summary
The Welcome Software Publishing plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Arbitrary Options Update in all versions up to and including 0.0.31. This is due to a missing capability check in the nc_setOption() function, which is exposed via the nc.setOption XML-RPC method. The function authenticates the user via $wp_xmlrpc_server->login() (verifying credentials are valid) but does not perform any authorization check such as current_user_can('manage_options'). This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to update arbitrary WordPress options via XML-RPC requests. This can be leveraged to change the default_role option to 'administrator' and then register a new administrator account, achieving full privilege escalation and site takeover.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Total
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
Remediation
No fixed version listed by the sources yet.
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-4297
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-xgj6-m977-pghj
References
Other 9
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/47e53fd3-4e3f-433a-8e70-3a58c864184a?source=cve
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/trunk/newscred.php#L272
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/tags/0.0.31/newscred.php#L272
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/trunk/newscred.php#L264
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/tags/0.0.31/newscred.php#L264
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/trunk/newscred.php#L265
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/tags/0.0.31/newscred.php#L265
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/trunk/newscred.php#L44
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/newscred-publishing/tags/0.0.31/newscred.php#L44
Sources
- CVE-2026-4297 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-4297 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-xgj6-m977-pghj · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
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