CRITICAL: CVE-2026-4003 (CVSS 9.8) — multiple products

CVE: CVE-2026-4003

CVSS: 9.8 (3.1) — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity: CRITICAL

Status: Critical advisory

Affected

_See vendor advisory_

Summary

The Users manager – PN plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via Arbitrary User Meta Update in all versions up to and including 1.1.15. This is due to a flawed authorization logic check in the userspn_ajax_nopriv_server() function within the 'userspn_form_save' case. The conditional only blocks unauthenticated users when the user_id is empty, but when a non-empty user_id is supplied, execution bypasses this check entirely and proceeds to update arbitrary user meta via update_user_meta() without any authentication or authorization verification. Additionally, the nonce required for this AJAX endpoint ('userspn-nonce') is exposed to all visitors via wp_localize_script on the public wp_enqueue_scripts hook, rendering the nonce check ineffective as a security control. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update arbitrary user metadata for any user account, including the userspn_secret_token field.

Verified Sources

References

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/tags/1.0.31/includes/class-userspn-ajax-nopriv.php#L186
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/tags/1.0.31/includes/class-userspn-ajax-nopriv.php#L190
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/tags/1.0.31/includes/class-userspn-ajax-nopriv.php#L233
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/tags/1.0.31/includes/class-userspn-common.php#L168
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/tags/1.0.31/includes/class-userspn-functions-user.php#L235
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/trunk/includes/class-userspn-ajax-nopriv.php#L186
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/trunk/includes/class-userspn-ajax-nopriv.php#L190
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/trunk/includes/class-userspn-ajax-nopriv.php#L233
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/trunk/includes/class-userspn-common.php#L168
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/userspn/trunk/includes/class-userspn-functions-user.php#L235

_Validated by the Lyrie Threat Intelligence Pipeline — 3 independent sources confirmed before publication. No speculation._

Lyrie Verdict

A vulnerability of this severity is exactly what Lyrie's anti-rogue-AI defense is built for: continuous, autonomous monitoring that doesn't wait for human reaction time.

#critical