# Essential Real Estate <= 5.3.5 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Insecure Direct Object Reference to Arbitrary Agent Details Modification

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-2941
- **Plugin:** Essential Real Estate (`essential-real-estate`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/essential-real-estate/
- **Affected versions:** all versions before 5.3.6
- **Fixed in:** 5.3.6 (Update to 5.3.6 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-639
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Low, affected versions Low (as of 2026-11-12)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/essential-real-estate
- **Fix released:** 2026-11-10
- **Published:** 2026-11-12
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2941/

## Description

The Essential Real Estate plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Insecure Direct Object Reference via the wp-admin profile update in all versions up to, and including, 5.3.5, due to the update_custom_user_profile_fields() function, hooked to personal_options_update and edit_user_profile_update, accepting a user-controlled 'author_agent_id' value without checking that the user may link to or edit that agent. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to link their account to any agent post and overwrite that agent's details, such as email address, description, company, phone numbers and website URL. Overwriting the agent email redirects that agent's contact form messages to an address the attacker chooses.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2941/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/essential-real-estate/tags/5.3.6/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/essential-real-estate/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-2941/

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.