CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2021-21389 — BuddyPress is an open source WordPress plugin to build a community site
BuddyPress is an open source WordPress plugin to build a community site. In releases of BuddyPress from 5.0.0 before 7.2.1 it's possible for a non-privileged, regular user to obtain administrator rights by exploiting an issue in the REST API members endpoint. The vulnerability has been fixed in BuddyPress 7.2.1. Existing installations of the plugin should be updated to this version to mitigate the issue.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 9 (2.0)
- Published
- 2021-03-26
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- php/wordpress
- Weaknesses
- CWE-863
Affected products
- buddypress / buddypress
Matched remediation archetype
Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
- Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
- Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.
Remediate safely
- Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
- Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
- Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.