Attack Vectors

Frontend Admin by DynamiApps (WordPress plugin slug: acf-frontend-form-element) has a Critical privilege escalation vulnerability (CVSS 9.8) tracked as CVE-2025-14736.

The primary attack path is straightforward: if an attacker can reach a user registration form that includes a Role field built with this plugin, they may be able to submit a role value that results in an administrator-level account being created. Importantly, this can be done without being logged in (unauthenticated), which significantly increases exposure for public-facing sites.

This risk is most relevant for organizations that use frontend registration or membership workflows, partner portals, campaign microsites, or any public form-driven onboarding that allows role selection (or includes a role field behind the scenes).

Security Weakness

According to the published vulnerability details, versions of Frontend Admin by DynamiApps up to and including 3.28.29 are vulnerable due to insufficient validation of user-supplied role values in the plugin’s role-handling logic (including the functions validate_value, pre_update_value, and get_fields_display).

In practical terms, this means the plugin may accept a role request that should never be allowed during self-registration, enabling a user to elevate privileges during account creation when a registration form includes a Role field.

Remediation is clear: update to version 3.28.30 or newer, which includes the vendor’s patch for this issue.

Technical or Business Impacts

If exploited, this vulnerability can allow attackers to gain administrator control of a WordPress site. From a business perspective, administrator access is effectively full control—impacting brand, revenue, operations, and compliance.

Business risks may include website defacement, malicious redirects that damage campaign performance and customer trust, unauthorized changes to content and analytics tags, and disruption of lead-generation workflows. Attackers with admin access can also create persistence (additional admin users) and make changes that are difficult to detect quickly.

Compliance and legal exposure may arise if unauthorized access leads to data access or changes to customer-facing disclosures, consent mechanisms, or security settings. Even if no data is proven exfiltrated, incident response, downtime, and mandatory notifications can drive significant cost and executive attention.

Similar Attacks

Privilege escalation and account takeover flaws in WordPress plugins are a recurring, high-impact pattern—especially when they can be triggered without authentication. Notable real-world examples include:

CVE-2024-27956 (WP Automatic) — a widely reported plugin vulnerability associated with serious site compromise risk.

CVE-2023-2732 (Essential Addons for Elementor) — a major WordPress plugin issue that received broad attention due to impact potential and widespread usage.

CVE-2020-11738 (Ultimate Addons for Elementor) — another example of a plugin security flaw that highlighted how quickly WordPress sites can be exposed when vulnerabilities are widely deployed.