Summary
CVE-2026-65500 is a high-severity Unauthenticated Broken Access Control vulnerability (CWE-862: Missing Authorization) affecting the Manual – Documentation, Knowledge Base & Education WordPress Theme by pixelacehq, in all versions up to and including 7.5.4. The flaw enables unauthenticated remote attackers to bypass the theme’s content access restrictions and read protected documentation without any credentials or user interaction. With a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (HIGH), this vulnerability poses a meaningful risk to organizations relying on the theme to host restricted or proprietary knowledge bases.
Technical details
- Root cause: A missing authorization check in a theme function that enforces content access controls. The function does not verify whether a requestor is authenticated or holds the required role before granting access to restricted content (CWE-862: Missing Authorization).
- Trigger conditions: No authentication, elevated privileges, or user interaction are required. An attacker needs only network access to the affected WordPress instance.
- Attack vector: Remotely exploitable over the network (AV:N) with low attack complexity (AC:L) and no prerequisites beyond HTTP reachability.
- Impact: High confidentiality impact — an unauthenticated attacker can access content that the theme’s per-post or per-category access control system reserves for logged-in users or specific user roles. There is no integrity or availability impact.
Affected software
- Manual – Documentation, Knowledge Base & Education WordPress Theme by pixelacehq, all versions ≤ 7.5.4
Severity
CVSS v3.1 Base Score: 7.5 (HIGH)
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Mitigation and recommended actions
- Immediate – Check for a patched release: No official patch had been released as of the publication date of this advisory (July 23, 2026). Monitor the pixelacehq vendor page on ThemeForest for an updated theme version and apply it as soon as one becomes available.
- Network-level mitigation: If protected documentation must remain accessible, enforce authentication at the WAF or reverse-proxy layer before requests reach WordPress, preventing unauthenticated users from reaching the vulnerable access-control logic.
- Content audit: Review all content currently protected by the theme’s access control features. Consider temporarily unpublishing highly sensitive material — such as internal API documentation, proprietary product manuals, or restricted knowledge base articles — until a vendor patch is available.
- Monitor for exploitation: As this vulnerability requires no authentication and no complexity, it is well-suited for mass-scanning campaigns. Monitor access logs for unusual patterns targeting documentation pages.
IONIX Status
The IONIX research team is tracking ongoing exploitation attempts and recommends immediate patching. Potentially affected assets are outlined in this post.

