CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2025-14533 — Advanced Custom Fields: Extended security vulnerability
The Advanced Custom Fields: Extended plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 0.9.2.1. This is due to the 'insert_user' function not restricting the roles with which a user can register. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to supply the 'administrator' role during registration and gain administrator access to the site. Note: The vulnerability can only be exploited if 'role' is mapped to the custom field.
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2026-01-20
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- php/wordpress
- Weaknesses
- CWE-269
Affected products
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Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
- Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
- Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.
Remediate safely
- Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
- Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
- Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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