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CVE-2026-86583

high

The Import and export users and customers plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.4.17 via the plugi…

The Import and export users and customers plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.4.17 via the plugin's own export and re-import workflow. The vulnerability exists because the exporter writes CSV cells using fputcsv() with a NUL byte (\0) as the escape character, while the importer parses the same file using SplFileObject::fgetcsv() with only a single delimiter argument, causing PHP's default backslash escape character to be applied instead; because the export column layout places display_name immediately before the role column and nickname immediately after, an attacker can store crafted values in those two profile fields — saved by WordPress core via the standard profile page — such that the escape mismatch causes the parser to merge the display_name cell into the role field and rebalance the column count via nickname, yielding administrator as the parsed role for their own row when it reaches the import_user function's add_role function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with Subscriber-level access or above to escalate their privileges to Administrator. Exploitation requires a site administrator to trigger the plugin's documented export re-import migration with both "Update existing users" and "Update roles for existing users" set to "yes".

CVSS
8.8
8.8 (CVSS v3.1)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity source: NVD CVSS v3.1 (security@wordfence.com)
Timeline (UTC)
Published: 2026-09-23 22:16
Modified: 2026-09-24 14:42
NVD status: Deferred
Last synced 2 days ago
Verified against the source API 2026-10-27 06:55 UTC
Exploitation
Not listed in CISA KEV (as of last catalog sync)
Absence from KEV does not mean a CVE is not exploited. Exploitation status: unknown (no authoritative evidence in our sources).

Affected products

Not reported by the source (unknown — not "none").

Weakness classification (CWE)

Source: NVD / CISA. “NVD-CWE-Other” and “NVD-CWE-noinfo” mean NVD could not assign a specific weakness.

Mitigation & advisories

No vendor advisory or patch reference tagged by NVD. Check the references below.

References

Data sources

NVD CVE API 2.0 — fetched 2026-10-27 06:55 UTC · record ↗

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