Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessIdentify Craft site with public registration and no email verification
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DeliveryDiscover deactivated admin's email address
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ExploitSubmit registration form with that email
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ExecutionAdmin flag inherited to new account
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ImpactLog in with full administrator control
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2025 - Insecure Design
ASVS 5.0
V8 - Authorization Least privilege enforcement
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Privilege Escalation The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Requires the target Craft CMS instance (before 5.10.11) to have public/allow-self-registration enabled AND email verification for new users disabled - both non-default hardening-dependent settings. The attacker must also know or guess the email address of an administrator account that was deactivated (not deleted); the vulnerable admin-flag inheritance keys off that reused email. No authentication is needed to perform the registration (PR:N), and no victim interaction is required (UI:N). Limiting factors: sites that delete removed admins, keep email verification on, or disable public registration are not exploitable. |
| Impact | This is a genuine high-priority issue where the required preconditions are met, but those preconditions meaningfully narrow the exposed population. The CVSS 4.0 vector (AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N, VC:H/VI:H/VA:H, base 9.2) reflects full compromise of confidentiality, integrity and availability with no authentication, while the AT:P (Attack Requirements: Present) metric explicitly encodes the non-default configuration dependency. There is no CVSS 3.1 vector, EPSS score, KEV listing, or POC indicator in the provided data, so real-world exploitation pressure cannot be quantified - the honest read is a serious flaw with strong impact but conditional reachability. It is not currently confirmed actively exploited and no public exploit code is identified; the risk is largely governed by whether a site runs public registration with email verification disabled and has ever deactivated (rather than deleted) an admin whose email an attacker can learn. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | On a Craft CMS site with public registration enabled and email verification turned off, an attacker learns the email of a former administrator whose account was deactivated rather than deleted. The attacker submits the public registration form using that email address and is immediately provisioned with administrator privileges, gaining full control of the CMS content, users, and settings. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Sep 02, 2026
Privilege escalation in Craft CMS before 5.10.11 lets remote attackers gain administrator rights by registering a new account using the email address of a previously deactivated admin, because the admin flag is not validated and persists across registration. Exploitation requires public user registration to be enabled and email verification to be disabled. Reported by VulnCheck with a vendor security advisory (GHSA-242m-9wq7-vhwq); no public exploit identified at time of analysis.
RemediationAI
Vendor-released patch: upgrade to Craft CMS 5.10.11 or later, which enforces validation of the admin flag during registration (advisory https://github.com/craftcms/cms/security/advisories/GHSA-242m-9wq7-vhwq). Where immediate patching is not possible, remove the two configuration prerequisites: disable public user registration, or re-enable email verification for new registrations so an attacker cannot silently claim a deactivated admin's email - both directly break the attack but may affect self-service signup flows. Additionally, fully delete deactivated administrator accounts rather than leaving them deactivated, and audit existing users for unexpected admin flags. Trade-offs: disabling public registration blocks legitimate self-signup, and enabling email verification adds onboarding friction and requires a working mail configuration.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Craft CMS is a widely used PHP/Yii-based commercial content management system (CPE cpe:2.3:a:craftcms:cms). The flaw is CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management): during the user-registration workflow the application fails to sanitize or re-derive the admin privilege flag, instead letting it inherit from a prior account record tied to the same email address. When an administrator account is deactivated rather than deleted, its elevated flag remains associated with that identity, so a fresh self-registration reusing the deactivated admin's email is provisioned as an administrator. The root cause is trusting persisted account state instead of enforcing that newly self-registered users default to non-privileged.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Unauthenticated network registration (PR:N/AV:N) but requires non-default config plus a known deactivated-admin email, so AC:H; full admin takeover gives C:H/I:H/A:H.
Primary rating from Vendor (VulnCheck).
CVSS VectorVendor: VulnCheck
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
Craft CMS before 5.10.11 fails to validate the admin flag during user registration, allowing it to persist from deactivated admin accounts. Attackers can register with a deactivated admin's email address to inherit administrator privileges when public registration and disabled email verification are configured.
Technical POC Analysis
CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management.
Full technical POC analysis - root cause, step-by-step exploitation and patch breakdown - is part of the Pro and Business plans.
Executive ViewAI
Craft CMS versions before 5.10.11 allow remote attackers to gain administrator privileges by registering accounts using deactivated admin email addresses when public user registration is enabled and email verification is disabled. Organizations running vulnerable configurations risk complete administrative compromise and unauthorized access to sensitive site data and functionality.
No vendor-released patch identified at time of analysis. Disable public user registration or enable email verification to eliminate the attack vector; implementing either control prevents exploitation regardless of patch status.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Privilege escalation occurs when an attacker leverages flaws in access control mechanisms to gain permissions beyond what they were originally granted.
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EUVD-2026-69907
GHSA-c8qg-58pw-vmfc
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
Exploit-DB