CVE-2025-14866
Published: 23 January 2026
Summary
CVE-2025-14866 is a high-severity Incorrect Authorization (CWE-863) vulnerability in Wordpress (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 28.3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-2 (Account Management) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-14866 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Melapress Role Editor plugin for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 1.1.1. The flaw arises from a misconfigured capability check in the 'save_secondary_roles_field' function, classified under CWE-863 (Incorrect Authorization). It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), indicating high severity due to its potential for significant confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts.
Authenticated attackers with Subscriber-level access or higher can exploit this vulnerability remotely with low complexity and no user interaction required. By targeting the flawed function, they can assign themselves elevated roles, including Administrator, enabling full control over the WordPress installation.
References include source code locations in the plugin's WordPress trac repository for version 1.1.0, such as classes/admin/additional-form-fields/class-user-profile.php at line 103 and classes/admin/ajax/class-admin-ajax.php, along with changeset 3439348 and a Wordfence threat intelligence report detailing the vulnerability.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-4409
Vulnerability details
The Melapress Role Editor plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.1.1. This is due to a misconfigured capability check on the 'save_secondary_roles_field' function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with…
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Subscriber-level access and above, to assign themselves additional roles including Administrator.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Direct privilege escalation via flawed authorization check allowing role elevation from subscriber to administrator.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Enforces approved authorizations for access to system resources, directly countering the misconfigured capability check that allowed unauthorized role assignments.
Implements least privilege to restrict user capabilities, preventing subscriber-level attackers from escalating to administrator roles.
Manages account creation, modification, and review to ensure roles are assigned only with proper authorization, mitigating self-escalation via the flawed plugin function.