Vulnerability · Published Sep 15, 2026 · Assigned by Wordfence
CVE-2026-14805Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme <= 6.7.16 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Privilege Escalation via AJAX
High 8.8
In plain English
A high-severity privilege mismanagement in Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme from StylemixThemes. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 39% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
The Consulting theme for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in versions up to, and including, 6.7.16. This is due to a combination of two flaws: (1) the masterstudy_ms_stm_set_discard_transient AJAX endpoint in admin/admin-notices/classes/STMHandler.php accepts an arbitrary transient key without capability checks or nonce validation, and (2) the developer access login mechanism in admin/classes/stm-theme-support.php authenticates users based on a transient value without proper cryptographic validation when in legacy string mode. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to set the stm_developer_access_token transient to a known value (1), then authenticate as any existing user including administrators by visiting a specially crafted URL, thereby achieving full privilege escalation to administrator.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| StylemixThemes | Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme | 0 – through 6.7.16 |
Weakness: CWE-269 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H