---
id: "CVE-2026-120070"
kind: "vulnerability"
aliases: ["CVE-2026-120070"]
title: "User Frontend WordPress plugin: subscribers can mint editor accounts via shortcode"
severity: "high"
cvss: 8.8
epss: null
exploited: false
status: "open"
category: "other"
products: []
ecosystems: []
tags: ["other", "user-frontend", "wordpress", "wordpress-plugin"]
not_affected_if: ["autologin-disabled", "plugin-not-installed"]
published_at: "2026-10-31T08:16:49+00:00"
first_seen_at: "2026-10-31T08:34:28+00:00"
updated_at: "2026-10-31T08:35:09+00:00"
sources: [{"source": "nvd", "url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-120070", "first_seen_at": "2026-10-31T08:34:28+00:00"}]
---

# User Frontend WordPress plugin: subscribers can mint editor accounts via shortcode

The User Frontend WordPress plugin up to and including 4.3.13 lets a logged-in Subscriber store a registration shortcode in a published post by hiding a control byte in its tag name, which bypasses the plugin's blocklist check. Any visitor can then submit the resulting public form to create an Editor-role account, and when autologin after registration is enabled, that account is logged in immediately.

_Summary, check and fix written by a model from the sources; labelled as such._

## How to check

- Check the User Frontend plugin version in the WordPress admin Plugins screen; versions up to and including `4.3.13` are affected.
- Check whether `autologin_after_registration` is enabled in the plugin's settings.
- Search published posts for `[wpuf-registration` with `role="editor"` in the content.

## Timeline

- 2026-10-31T08:34:28+00:00 nvd https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-120070

## From the sources

The User Frontend – Membership, User Registration, User Profile, User Directory & Content Restriction with Frontend Post Submission plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 4.3.13 via the `post_content` parameter of the `submit_post()` function. The vulnerability exists because the protected-shortcode blocklist guard inspects the `sanitize_textarea_field()` copy of the submitted `post_content`, while the copy actually persisted to the database is processed through `wp_kses()`, whose `wp_kses_no_null()` step strips C0 control bytes — allowing an attacker to inject a single `\x01` byte inside the `[wpuf-registration]` tag name to defeat the `strpos()` blocklist check while the clean, functional shortcode is stored verbatim; `strip_shortcodes()` does not neutralize the stored shortcode either, because the Frontend container that registers it via `add_shortcode()` is only instantiated when `is_admin()` is false, and `admin-ajax` requests have `is_admin() === true`. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to inject a `[wpuf-registration role="editor"]` shortcode into a published post, causing a live Editor-role registration form to be rendered publicly on the frontend that any visitor — or the attacker themselves — can submit to mint a WordPress Editor account with an immediately active privileged session when the default `autologin_after_registration` setting is enabled.

---

_Free to read at a human pace. An API with keys and an MCP server are in preparation; early access: hello@infrastack.ai_