CVE-2026-110031 in Salon Booking System Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 10/18/2026
The Salon Booking System WordPress plugin before 10.31.11 does not prevent users holding its custom salon staff role from assigning arbitrary capabilities to other accounts when editing a customer, allowing them to escalate any account to administrator and take over the site.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/18/2026
The vulnerability identified in versions of the Salon Booking System WordPress plugin prior to 10.31.11 represents a critical privilege escalation flaw rooted in improper access control mechanisms. Specifically, the defect allows users assigned with the custom salon staff role to manipulate capability assignments for other user accounts during the editing process. This architectural weakness bypasses standard WordPress permission checks, enabling individuals who should only have limited operational privileges to modify administrative settings and elevate their own or others' account permissions to that of a site administrator.
From a technical perspective, this issue is classified under CWE-269, which denotes Improper Privilege Management. The core failure lies in the plugin's handling of user meta data during edit operations. When a staff member attempts to modify customer details, the underlying code fails to validate whether the actor possesses sufficient authority to alter capability arrays for other users. Consequently, an attacker can inject arbitrary capabilities into the target account's profile, effectively granting them full control over the WordPress installation. This aligns with MITRE ATT&CK technique T1078, Valid Accounts, as it involves leveraging legitimate but misconfigured credentials to gain unauthorized elevated access within a system.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe, potentially leading to complete compromise of the affected website. Once an attacker escalates their privileges to administrator level, they can execute arbitrary code, modify site content, install malicious plugins, or exfiltrate sensitive customer data stored by the booking system. Given that salon booking systems often handle personal identifiable information and payment details, this breach poses significant risks regarding data privacy compliance and business continuity. The ability to take over the entire site means the attacker is no longer limited to disrupting bookings but can use the server as a pivot point for further network attacks or distribute malware to visitors through compromised website content.
Mitigation strategies must prioritize immediate remediation of the software version in question. Administrators should upgrade the Salon Booking System plugin to version 10.31.11 or later, where this permission check has been corrected to enforce strict role-based access control. In environments where upgrading is not immediately feasible, temporary mitigations include restricting the salon staff role's capabilities via additional security plugins that harden user management permissions, ensuring that only users with explicit administrator privileges can edit other users' capability settings. Furthermore, implementing multi-factor authentication for all administrative accounts and regularly auditing user roles can help detect unauthorized privilege changes early in the attack lifecycle.