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CVE-2026-18467 – Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation to Admin – Paytium: Mollie Payment Forms & Don

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Summary

CVE-2026-18467 is a critical unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability in the Paytium: Mollie payment forms & donations WordPress plugin, affecting all versions up to and including 5.0.3. A flaw in how the plugin processes checkout form fields allows an unauthenticated attacker to register a new WordPress account with the Administrator role, leading to full site takeover. The vulnerability has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (Critical).

Technical details

  • Root cause: Version 5.0.3 added a wp_hash()/hash_equals() signature check on the pt-paytium-user-data field to prevent tampering, but a separate function, pt_cf_checkout_meta(), is registered on the pt_meta_values hook after the signed builder runs. This second function copies every $_POST['pt_form_field'][*] key verbatim into the payment meta array without any signature verification.
  • Trigger conditions: An attacker submits arbitrary pt_form_field[pt-user-role] POST data through a publicly-exposed [paytium] shortcode payment form. Because pt_cf_checkout_meta() runs after the signed data is built, the attacker-supplied pt-user-role value overwrites the value that came from the signed path.
  • Attack vector: Network-based, requiring no authentication. The attacker only needs to complete a payment/checkout flow on a form that uses the [paytium] shortcode.
  • Impact: The persisted _pt-user-role post meta is read by paytium_user_data_processing() and passed directly as the role argument to wp_insert_user(), allowing creation of a new WordPress user with the Administrator role. The attacker can then take over the new admin account via WordPress’s standard lost-password flow using the email address they supplied, resulting in complete site compromise.

Affected software

  • Paytium: Mollie payment forms & donations (WordPress plugin) — all versions up to and including 5.0.3

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 Paytium: Mollie payment forms & donations plugin to a version newer than 5.0.3, which addresses the signature-verification gap in the checkout meta handling.
  • If immediate patching is not possible: Disable or remove any publicly-accessible pages/forms using the [paytium] shortcode until the plugin is updated. Audit recently created WordPress user accounts, particularly any with the Administrator role, and review site logs for unexpected payment/checkout submissions. Enforce strong, unique credentials and consider requiring manual approval for new administrator accounts as a temporary compensating control.

References

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