Vulnerability in Import and export users and customers — CVE-2026-120554
What to do now
Update Import and export users and customers to 2.5.12 or later.
Affected versions
- Everything up to and including 2.5.11
Affected: Import and export users and customers (plugin, import-users-from-csv-with-meta)
What the vulnerability is
The Import and export users and customers plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.5.11 This is due to a non-atomic multi-option write sequence in the `ACUI_Cron::save_settings()` function, which persists `acui_cron_activated`, `acui_cron_configured_by`, `acui_cron_user_id`, and `acui_cron_path_to_file` before reaching the authorization gate that calls `wp_die()` when a non-promoter submits a role. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers holding a custom delegated role with `create_users` but without `promote_users` or `edit_users` to escalate their privileges to Administrator, provided a prior administrator cron-tab save exists and no successful save intervenes before the next unattended cron tick processes the attacker's repointed CSV file.
Sources
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/import-users-from-csv-with-meta/tags/2.5.7/classes/cron.php#L101
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/import-users-from-csv-with-meta/tags/2.5.7/classes/cron.php#L166
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/import-users-from-csv-with-meta/tags/2.5.7/classes/cron.php#L49
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/import-users-from-csv-with-meta/tags/2.5.7/classes/import.php#L1104
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/import-users-from-csv-with-meta/tags/2.5.7/classes/import.php#L909
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3775652/import-users-from-csv-with-meta