What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-18322: Smart Popup by Supsystic <= 1.12.0 - Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation to Administrator
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2026-08-05 · updated 2026-08-12
- Weakness: CWE-269
Description
The Smart Popup by Supsystic plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.12.0. This is due to a permission map collision in the `havePermissions()` function in `classes/frame.php`, where `array_merge()` overwrites the popup module's administrator-restricted method list with the base controller's value, silently removing `save` from protected actions; this is compounded by the subscription confirmation email embedding the same generic `pps_nonce` that the unauthenticated `wp_ajax_nopriv_save` endpoint accepts, and by the complete absence of any server-side role allowlist in `createWpSubscriber()`. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to submit a crafted POST request to `admin-ajax.php` using a nonce obtained from a public subscription confirmation email, setting `params[tpl][sub_wp_create_user_role]` to `administrator` via the exposed `popupControllerPps::save()` action, and then triggering the stored confirmation flow to create a persistent WordPress Administrator account with attacker-chosen credentials.
Affected products
- supsysticcom Smart Popup by Supsystic: through 1.12.0
References
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/classes/frame.php#L180
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/popup/models/popup.php#L316
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/subscribe/models/subscribe.php#L292
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/subscribe/models/subscribe.php#L358
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/popup-by-supsystic/tags/1.11.2/modules/subscribe/models/subscribe.php#L440
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?sfp_email=&sfph_mail=&reponame=&new=3629986%40popup-by-supsystic%2Ftrunk%2Fmodules%2Fsubscribe%2Fmodels%2Fsubscribe.php&old=3628131%40popup-by-supsystic%2Ftrunk%2Fmodules%2Fsubscribe%2Fmodels%2Fsubscribe.php&sfp_email=&sfph_mail=
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/835579b0-8a96-40fa-a6a3-30571a0a1d0a?source=cve
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