CVE-2026-9018

Description

The Easy Elements for Elementor – Addons & Website Templates plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.4.5 via the `easyel_handle_register()` function. This is due to the `wp_ajax_nopriv_eel_register` AJAX handler iterating the attacker-controlled `custom_meta` POST array and writing every supplied key-value pair to the newly created user's meta via `update_user_meta()` without any key whitelist or blocklist, allowing the `wp_capabilities` user meta key to be overwritten after `wp_insert_user()` has already assigned a safe role. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to register a new account with full administrator-level privileges by supplying `custom_meta[wp_capabilities][administrator]=1`. Exploitation requires that user registration is enabled on the site and that at least one page exposes the Login/Register widget, which publishes the required `easy_elements_nonce` into the page DOM where it can be retrieved by any unauthenticated visitor via a simple GET request.

Predictions

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No vendor mitigations ingested yet for this CVE. The mitigation-content worker queues fetches as references arrive — check back in a few minutes, or see the references list below.

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/easy-elements/tags/1.4.5/includes/Utils/Enqueue.php#L200
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/easy-elements/tags/1.4.5/widgets/login-register/class.login-register.php#L128
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/easy-elements/tags/1.4.5/widgets/login-register/class.login-register.php#L65
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/easy-elements/tags/1.4.5/widgets/login-register/class.login-register.php#L9
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/f1de4899-532a-4558-bff0-f4610bfdd49d?source=cve

CWEs

CWE-269