Live Exposure Defense: From CVE to Confirmed Exposure in 12 Hours – See more

Back
New CVE Detected

CVE-2026-12949 – Unauthenticated Account Takeover / Privilege Escalation – Wishlist Member WordPress

Be the first to know when new zero-days emerge:

Subscribe to Email Alerts
Subscribe to RSS Feed

Summary

CVE-2026-12949 is a critical unauthenticated account takeover vulnerability in the Wishlist Member WordPress membership plugin, affecting versions up to and including 3.34.1. The flaw lets an unauthenticated attacker hijack any existing WordPress account — including administrator accounts — by manipulating registration parameters, and carries a CVSS v3.1 score of 9.8 (Critical).

Technical details

  • Root cause: the plugin’s registration handler (wpm_register()) validates the registration cookie only against the GET reg parameter, without verifying that the POST mergewith parameter actually references a temporary/incomplete registrant tied to the current registration transaction.
  • Trigger condition: an attacker submits a crafted registration request containing the POST mergewith parameter set to the numeric user ID of an arbitrary existing account.
  • Impact: the target account’s username, password, email address, first name, and last name can be overwritten with attacker-controlled values via wp_update_user(), while WordPress notification emails are suppressed.
  • Additional impact: when the POST wpm_id parameter references a non-existent/invalid membership level, the target account’s existing WordPress role — including Administrator — is left unchanged, resulting in full account and site takeover.
  • Attack vector: remote, over the network, requiring no authentication and no user interaction.

Affected software

  • Wishlist Member WordPress plugin — all versions up to and including 3.34.1

Severity

  • CVSS v3.1 Base Score: 9.8 (Critical)
  • Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Mitigation and recommended actions

  • Immediate: update the Wishlist Member plugin to the latest version available from the vendor (releases after 3.34.1 have been published); confirm with the vendor that the installed build addresses the mergewith/wpm_id registration validation issue described above.
  • If an update cannot be applied immediately: restrict or monitor public access to plugin registration endpoints, review recent user account changes (especially administrator accounts) for unexpected email/username/password modifications, and consider disabling self-registration through the plugin until patched.
  • After patching, audit existing user accounts for signs of prior compromise, since the vulnerability suppresses standard WordPress change notification emails.

How IONIX identifies potentially affected assets

IONIX matches the following signals against data already collected when it crawled the asset; identifying the technology sends no request beyond that crawl.

  • Raw response body: /wp-content/plugins/wishlist-member/ui/css/frontend.css?ver=, /wp-content/plugins/wishlist-member/

References

Are you exposed?

Get a free report of your organization’s exposure to this CVE and threat

  • Mapping of all Assets with this Technology
  • Identification of potentially exposed assets to this CVE
  • Confirmation of verified exploitable assets
Get Exposure Report

How IONIX’s External Exposure Management Platform Detects and Validates
Zero-Days to Shrink MTTR

1

Map your entire attack surface (continously)

IONIX uses multi-factor discovery methods, including DNS analysis, certificate mapping, metadata inspection, and more, to automatically map every internet-facing asset across your environment. This includes cloud instances, third-party platforms, shadow IT, and even forgotten infrastructure that traditional tools miss.

2

Monitor for new CVEs

Dozens of threat intel feeds using agentic technology are continuously analyzed to detect the appearance of proof-of-concept code, exploit kits, and indicators of active targeting. IONIX goes further by applying AI to proactively evaluate whether emerging vulnerabilities are likely to be exploited, even before PoCs go public.

3

Identify Potential External Exposures

Not all CVEs matter. IONIX filters vulnerabilities by asking attacker-centric questions: Can it be reached from the internet? Does it require authentication? Is it being exploited in the wild? This dramatically reduces noise and focuses teams on threats that can actually be weaponized.

4

Create Safe, Scalable Exploit Validations

IONIX transforms real-world PoCs into safe, non-intrusive test payloads that can be run in production environments without disruption. These simulations are precisely targeted to the systems that are vulnerable, ensuring rapid validation without unnecessary load.

5

Execute Exploit Validations

By combining context about software stack, versioning, exposure status, and reachability, IONIX ensures that only the right payloads are executed against the right assets, maximizing efficiency and minimizing risk.

6

Drive Fast and Actionable Remediation

Results are routed through integrations with ticketing, SOAR, and SIEM tools. Issues are written in plain language, bundled into remediation clusters, and prioritized based on asset criticality, exploitability, and blast radius. This shortens mean time to remediation (MTTR) and empowers teams to act with confidence.

Are you exposed?

Get a free report of your organization’s exposure to this CVE and threat

  • Mapping of all Assets with this Technology
  • Identification of potentially exposed assets to this CVE
  • Confirmation of verified exploitable assets
Get Exposure Report
Close

Subscribe to Threat Center RSS

Copy/paste the link below into your preferred RSS reader or follow these instructions to subscribe to Slack alerts.

Open RSS feedSlack setup instructions

Close

Get Real-Time CVE Alerts to Your Email

Be the first to know when new zero-days emerge