contest-gallery Contest Gallery Plugin up to 30.0.2 on WordPress Database Table change-options-and-sizes.php current_user_can RegistryUserRole privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in contest-gallery Contest Gallery Plugin up to 30.0.2 on WordPress. It has been rated as critical. The affected element is the function current_user_can of the file change-options-and-sizes.php of the component Database Table Handler. The manipulation of the argument RegistryUserRole leads to privileges management. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2026-12165. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in contest-gallery Contest Gallery Plugin up to 30.0.2 on WordPress. It has been rated as critical. This issue affects the function current_user_can of the file change-options-and-sizes.php of the component Database Table Handler. The manipulation of the argument RegistryUserRole with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

The Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 30.0.2 via the `RegistryUserRole` parameter. This is due to the plugin's admin menu being registered at the `edit_posts` capability level — granting Contributor-level users access to the plugin's admin pages and a valid `cg_admin` nonce — while the option-saving handler in `change-options-and-sizes.php` performs no `current_user_can()` capability check beyond `check_admin_referer('cg_admin')`, and the `RegistryUserRole` value is processed only through `sanitize_text_field()` and `htmlentities()` without restriction to an allowlist of permitted role names. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with author-level access and above, to overwrite the plugin's stored `RegistryUserRole` option with `administrator`, which the `cg_create_wp_user_from_google_user` function then reads back from the `contest_gal1ery_registry_and_login_options` database table without any allowlist validation and passes directly to `wp_update_user()`, effectively promoting a newly registered Google sign-in account to Administrator.

The weakness was released by Chloe Chamberland and PRISM. The advisory is shared at wordfence.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-12165 since 06/12/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available. The price for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 06/17/2026). MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1068 for this issue.

By approaching the search of inurl:change-options-and-sizes.php it is possible to find vulnerable targets with Google Hacking.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Productinfo

Type

• Photo Gallery Software

Vendor

• contest-gallery

Name

• Contest Gallery Plugin

Version

• 30.0.0
• 30.0.1
• 30.0.2

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Discussion