CVE Intelligence
Skip to main content
HIGH

CVE-2026-4021

CVE-2026-4021 — Contest Gallery <= 28.1.5 - Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation Admin Account Takeover via Registration Confirmation Email-to-ID Type Confusion

The Contest Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to an authentication bypass leading to admin account takeover in all versions up to, and including, 28.1.5. This is due to the email confirmation handler in `users-registry-check-after-email-or-pin-confirmation.php` using the user's email string in a `WHERE ID = %s` clause instead of the numeric user ID, combined with an unauthenticated key-based login endpoint in `ajax-functions-frontend.php`. When the non-default `RegMailOptional=1` setting is enabled, an attacker can register with a crafted email starting with the target user ID (e.g., `[email protected]`), trigger the confirmation flow to overwrite the admin's `user_activation_key` via MySQL integer coercion, and then use the `post_cg1l_login_user_by_key` AJAX action to authenticate as the admin without any credentials. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to…

Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, Wordfence

Triage

Is it exploited, how likely is exploitation, what does it touch, and how severe do the scoring sources call it.

Exploitation

Unreported

no source claims exploitation

EPSS

0%

chance of exploitation in 30 days

Affects

contest gallery

contest_gallery_upload_vote_photos_media_sell_with_paypal_stripe

CVSS base

8.1

HIGH

CISA SSVC assessment

Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.

CISA

Exploitation

None

none · proof-of-concept · active

Automatable

No

can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps

Technical impact

Total

partial · total control of the vulnerable component

Affected scope

The catalog records vendors and products as separate lists, not pairs, so which product belongs to which vendor is not something this page can say.

Vendors (1)

contest gallery

Products (1)

contest gallery upload vote photos media sell with paypal stripe

Every base score collected

Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
8.1CVSS 3.1HIGH——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-287

Attack patterns reported against this CVE. The ATT&CK techniques below are inferred from its weakness class.

  • T1548Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
  • T1040Network Sniffing
  • T1185Browser Session Hijacking

References

6 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

Not in any source we poll

Listed rather than left blank: an empty field and an unmeasured one look identical on screen, and only one is a reason to look elsewhere.

  • No confirmed IOCs, IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or malware artifacts supplied.
  • No organization-specific asset inventory, compensating-control status, or patch deployment evidence supplied.
  • No exploit packet captures, log samples, or incident case IDs supplied.