Summary
CVE-2026-61967 is a critical Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation vulnerability in the miniOrange OTP Login, Verification and SMS Notifications WordPress plugin (package: miniorange-otp-verification), affecting versions up to and including 5.5.1. The flaw stems from a weak password recovery mechanism (CWE-640) and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (Critical). It requires no authentication or user interaction and is exploitable over the network, allowing attackers to escalate privileges on affected WordPress sites.
Technical details
- Root cause: the plugin’s password/account recovery (OTP-based) mechanism is weakly implemented, classified under CWE-640 (Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten Password).
- Trigger condition: an attacker abuses the flawed OTP/password-recovery flow without needing valid credentials.
- Attack vector: Network (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), no privileges required (PR:N), no user interaction (UI:N).
- Impact: full compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H) via unauthenticated privilege escalation, potentially allowing takeover of user or administrator accounts on the WordPress site.
Affected software
- miniOrange OTP Login, Verification and SMS Notifications (WordPress plugin, package
miniorange-otp-verification) — versions up to and including 5.5.1 - Fixed in version 5.5.2 and later
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 miniOrange OTP Login, Verification and SMS Notifications plugin to version 5.5.2 or later.
- If immediate patching is not possible: consider disabling the plugin’s password/account recovery (OTP-based) functionality until the update can be applied, and restrict/monitor access to affected recovery endpoints.
- Review WordPress user accounts and admin activity logs for signs of unauthorized privilege changes that may have occurred prior to patching.
How IONIX identifies potentially affected assets
IONIX matches the following signal against data already collected when it crawled the asset; identifying the technology sends no request beyond that crawl.
- Raw response body:
/wp-content/plugins/miniorange-otp-verification/

