The Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via Contact Identity Rebinding in all versions up to, and including, 4.9 The vulnerability exists because the create_contact function in the v3 REST endpoint (POST /gh/v3/contacts) is gated solely by the add_contacts capability and forwards the full request payload — including the security-bearing user_id column — into the upsert path of Contacts_DB::add(), which bypasses the ownership guard that Contacts_DB::update() enforces, allowing an attacker to rebind any existing contact record to an arbitrary WordPress user ID. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with Sales Representative-level access and above to upsert their own contact row to point to an Administrator's user ID, then invoke the v4 email-test endpoint (POST /gh/v4/emails/test) — also accessible to the Sales Representative role via the send_emails capability — to generate an {auto_login_url} one-time permissions key bound to the rebound contact, and consume that link to call wp_set_auth_cookie() and gain a fully authenticated session as the WordPress Administrator.
CVE-2026-97644
Score 8.8 from GitHub Security Advisory (severity: HIGH) published 2026-10-03. A secondary CVSS source baseline 8.8; sources differ by 0.0.
- High severity, but no confirmed exploitation yet
No fix is confirmed yet — apply a workaround or compensating control (WAF / firewall / segmentation) and watch for the fix.
- CVSS v3
- 8.8
- EG Score
- 8.8HIGHhigh confidence
- EG Risk
- 40EG Risk 40/100CISA SSVC
EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).
How it’s computedSeverity88% × 45%Exploitation1% × 40%Automatability0% × 15%CISA SSVC: Track at low or medium mission impact; Track* at high (mission-essential systems).Action: No fix is confirmed yet. Restrict network exposure of the affected system or apply the vendor's mitigation within your standard update timelines, and watch the vendor's advisory for the fix. - EPSS PROB
- 0.5%
- EPSS %ILE
- 40th
- KEV
- Not listed
CISA SSVCTrack at low or medium mission impact; Track* at high (mission-essential systems).
No fix is confirmed yet. Restrict network exposure of the affected system or apply the vendor's mitigation within your standard update timelines, and watch the vendor's advisory for the fix.
Exploitation none (CISA Vulnrichment) · Automatable no (CISA Vulnrichment) · Technical impact total (CISA Vulnrichment). Mission impact is CISA's Mission & Well-being decision point, and only you can judge it: high means the affected system is essential to your organisation's mission, or its compromise could cause irreversible harm to people. CISA's decision table
Published
October 3, 2026
Last Modified
October 3, 2026
References (9)
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/api/v3/contacts-api.php#L373
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/api/v4/emails-api.php#L571
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/db/contacts.php#L205
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/includes/main-roles.php#L532
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/includes/replacements.php#L2280
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/groundhogg/tags/4.8.3/includes/rewrites.php#L460
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3724910/groundhogg/trunk/api/v3/contacts-api.php
- security@wordfencehttps://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?reponame=&new=3724910%40groundhogg%2Ftags%2F4.9.1&old=3724058%40groundhogg%2Ftags%2F4.9
- security@wordfencehttps://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/557306b7-7b66-465e-8d4d-ebae5b1577c9?source=cve
Vendor Advisories for CVE-2026-97644(1)
These vendors published their own advisory mentioning this CVE — often with vendor-specific remediation steps + affected product lists not in NVD.
Weakness Classification(1)
MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 13× in last 7d / 13× in last 30d)
Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.
- 2026-10-05 05:02 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-05 05:02 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-10-04 23:23 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-10-04 16:49 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-10-04 04:34 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-10-03 16:22 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-03 16:22 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-10-03 16:10 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-03 16:10 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-10-03 14:26 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-10-03 04:20 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-03 03:35 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-03 03:35 UTCMITRE cvelistV5first tracked
Related CVEs(same CWE)
Frequently asked(5)
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Dependency Blast Radius
Explore the affected products and dependency analysis for CVE-2026-97644
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