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Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Kirki Plugin of WordPress

Indian – Computer Emergency Response Team (https://www.cert-in.org.in)

Severity Rating: CRITICAL

Software Affected

WordPress Plugin – Kirki versions 6.0.0 through 6.0.6

Overview

A critical vulnerability has been reported in the Kirki plugin for WordPress that could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to take over user accounts, including administrator accounts, on the targeted system.

Target Audience:

WordPress website owners, administrators, developers, and hosting providers using the Kirki plugin.

Risk Assessment:

Very high risk of account takeover, privilege escalation, unauthorized administrative access, and complete website compromise.

Impact Assessment:

Potential impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system.

Description

Kirki is an open-source framework for WordPress that provides Theme Customizer functionality and website-building capabilities.

A critical vulnerability exists in the Kirki plugin due to improper privilege management in its password reset functionality. The vulnerability arises because the plugin accepts an arbitrary email address when a username is supplied in a password reset request. As a result, an unauthenticated attacker can cause password reset links for legitimate users to be sent to attacker-controlled email addresses instead of the registered account owners email address.

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to gain elevated privileges on the targeted system.

Note: The vulnerability is being exploited in the wild.

Solution

Apply appropriate updates as mentioned by the vendor:

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/wordpress-plugins/kirki/kirki-600-606-unauthenticated-privilege-escalation-via-handle-forgot-password

Vendor Information

Kirki

https://wordpress.org/plugins/kirki/

References

Kirki

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/wordpress-plugins/kirki/kirki-600-606-unauthenticated-privilege-escalation-via-handle-forgot-password

CVE Name

CVE-2026-8206

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Thanks and Regards,

CERT-In

Incident Response Help Desk

e-mail: incident@cert-in.org.in

Phone: +91-11-22902657

Toll Free Number: 1800-11-4949

Toll Free Fax : 1800-11-6969

Web: http://www.cert-in.org.in

PGP Fingerprint: A768 083E 4475 5725 B81A A379 2156 C0C0 B620 D0B4

PGP Key information:

https://www.cert-in.org.in/s2cMainServlet?pageid=CONTACTUS

Postal address:

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In)

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

Government of India

Electronics Niketan

6, C.G.O. Complex

New Delhi-110 003

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