Privilege Escalation in Contest Gallery Plugin for WordPress by WordPress
CVE-2026-12165

8.8HIGH

Key Information:

Vendor

WordPress
Status
Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell With Paypal & Stripe
Vendor
CVE Published:
17 June 2026

What is CVE-2026-12165?

The Contest Gallery plugin for WordPress is susceptible to privilege escalation due to improper handling of user roles. Authenticated users with author-level access can exploit the RegistryUserRole parameter to override the plugin's stored role with 'administrator'. This flaw arises from insufficient verification in the change-options-and-sizes.php file, where the current_user_can() function is inadequately implemented. As a result, a malicious actor can gain unauthorized administrative access, potentially compromising the security of the entire WordPress site.

Affected Version(s)

Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe 0 <= 30.0.2

References

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id...
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/contest-galler...
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/contest-galler...

CVSS V3.1

Score:
8.8
Severity:
HIGH
Confidentiality:
High
Integrity:
High
Availability:
High
Attack Vector:
Network
Attack Complexity:
Low
Privileges Required:
Low
User Interaction:
None
Scope:
Unchanged

Timeline

  • Vulnerability published

  • Vulnerability Reserved

Credit

Chloe Chamberland
PRISM
.