Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-86731 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-86731 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-86731?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 6.5, published 8 September 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Craft CMS 5.0.0-RC1 through 5.10.11.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-86731?
- A patch was published on 2026: Fixed in Craft CMS 5.10.12 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-86731 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a web application.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-86731?
- Check whether anything you run is named in the advisory. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a missing authorization check (CWE-862) in the UsersController::actionActivateUser action. The action checks for administrateUsers permission but fails to call requireAdmin() when the target user is an administrator, unlike the symmetrical actionDeactivateUser action. An authenticated control panel user with administrateUsers permission (but not admin status) can POST to the users/activate-user endpoint with an admin user ID to activate a pending or deliberately deactivated administrator account. This can be chained with password reset functionality to achieve privilege escalation. The fix is available in Craft CMS 5.10.12 and later.
Affected products
- Craft CMS 5.0.0-RC1 through 5.10.11
Timeline
- 2026-08-25: disclosed: GHSA-jqf5-vfg6-8cx5 published
- 2026-09-08: advisory: CVE-2026-86731 published
- 2026: patched: Fixed in Craft CMS 5.10.12