# BetterDocs <= 4.9.5 - Authenticated (Contributor+) Missing Authorization to Doc Category Reassignment and Reordering

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-2869
- **Plugin:** BetterDocs – AI Documentation, Knowledge Base, MCP Server, Docs, Wikis, FAQ & Chatbot (`betterdocs`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/betterdocs/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 4.9.6
- **Fixed in:** 4.9.6 (Update to 4.9.6 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 4.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-862
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Medium, affected versions Medium (as of 2026-11-12)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/betterdocs
- **Fix released:** 2026-11-10
- **Published:** 2026-11-12
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2869/

## Description

The BetterDocs plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification of data via the update_docs_term and update_docs_order_by_category AJAX actions in all versions up to, and including, 4.9.5 due to a missing per-post capability check. Both handlers only checked the edit_docs capability, which contributors and authors have. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with contributor-level access and above, to move other users' docs between categories and to overwrite a category's saved doc order, which can hide published docs from the category listing.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2869/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/betterdocs/tags/4.9.6/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/betterdocs/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2869/

License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Free to use, share and adapt, also commercially, if you credit WPSec and link to this advisory.