CVE-2026-97644Groundhogg <= 4.9 - Authenticated (Sales Person+) Privilege Escalation via Contact Identity Rebinding leading to Administrator Account Takeover to 'user_id' Parameter (v3 /contacts) chained with v4 /emails/test
- 8.8HighCVSS base score
- 0.48%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 58% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
The Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via Contact Identity Rebinding in all versions up to, and including, 4.9 The vulnerability exists because the `create_contact` function in the v3 REST endpoint (`POST /gh/v3/contacts`) is gated solely by the `add_contacts` capability and forwards the full request payload — including the security-bearing `user_id` column — into the upsert path of `Contacts_DB::add()`, which bypasses the ownership guard that `Contacts_DB::update()` enforces, allowing an attacker to rebind any existing contact record to an arbitrary WordPress user ID. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with Sales Representative-level access and above to upsert their own contact row to point to an Administrator's user ID, then invoke the v4 email-test endpoint (`POST /gh/v4/emails/test`) — also accessible to the Sales Representative role via the `send_emails` capability — to generate an `{auto_login_url}` one-time permissions key bound to the rebound contact, and consume that link to call `wp_set_auth_cookie()` and gain a fully authenticated session as the WordPress Administrator.
Timeline
ID reserved
By Wordfence
- 9 days later
· 9 days later
Published
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordfenceCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Deferred | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.48% · top 58% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.8.
Affected products
References
References9
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/557306b7-7b66-465e-8d4d-ebae5b1577c9?source=cve (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/api/v3/contacts-api.php#L373 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/db/contacts.php#L205 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/api/v4/emails-api.php#L571 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/includes/replacements.php#L2280 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/includes/rewrites.php#L460 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/includes/main-roles.php#L532 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&new=3724910%40groundhogg%2Ftags%2F4.9.1&old=3724058%40groundhogg%2Ftags%2F4.9 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3724910/groundhogg/trunk/api/v3/contacts-api.php (opens in a new tab)
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-91893 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-97644)Record last updated .