# Ultimate Dashboard – Custom WordPress Dashboard <= 3.8.18 - Unauthenticated Protection Mechanism Bypass via Password-Protected Post Requests

- **ID:** WPSEC-2026-3161
- **Plugin:** Ultimate Dashboard – Custom WordPress Dashboard (`ultimate-dashboard`), https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-dashboard/
- **Affected versions:** from 3.5 before 4.0
- **Fixed in:** 4.0 (Update to 4.0 or later.)
- **Severity:** Medium 5.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N)
- **Weakness:** CWE-693
- **Usage among sites WPSec scans:** plugin Low, affected versions Low (as of 2026-11-15)
- **Attack surface analysis:** https://attacksurface.wpsec.com/plugin/ultimate-dashboard
- **Fix released:** 2026-11-14
- **Published:** 2026-11-15
- **URL:** https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3161/

## Description

The Ultimate Dashboard plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to a bypass of its custom login URL protection via password-protected post (postpass) requests in all versions up to, and including, 3.8.18, due to the protect_wp_login() function skipping its protection whenever the query string has action=postpass and a post_password parameter is present, while wp-login.php takes the action from $_REQUEST, where a POST 'action' field overrides the query string. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to use the default wp-login.php for other actions, such as logging in, even though the site owner enabled a custom login URL to hide it. Exploitation requires the custom login URL feature to be enabled.

## References

- https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3161/
- https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/ultimate-dashboard/tags/4.0/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-dashboard/

Source: WPSec, https://wpsec.com/vuln/WPSEC-2026-3161/

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.