What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-4153: BAN Users <= 1.5.3 - Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Subscriber+) Settings Update & Privilege Escalation

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-09-13 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-266

Description

The BAN Users plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in versions up to, and including, 1.5.3 due to a missing capability check on the 'w3dev_save_ban_user_settings_callback' function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with minimal permissions such as a subscriber, to modify the plugin settings to access the ban and unban functionality and set the role of the unbanned user.

Affected products

• webxmedia BAN Users: through 1.5.3

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ban-users/tags/1.5.3/include/ajax.php#L109
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ban-users/tags/1.5.3/include/ajax.php#L199
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/af6bd2db-47a4-4381-a881-d5f97a159f8d?source=cve
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ban-users/tags/1.5.3/include/ajax.php#L109
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/ban-users/tags/1.5.3/include/ajax.php#L199
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/af6bd2db-47a4-4381-a881-d5f97a159f8d?source=cve

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