CVE-2026-48172: LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

Name

LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Vendor

LiteSpeed

Product

cPanel Plugin

Added to the catalog

2026-05-26

Due date for US federal agencies

2026-05-29

Weaknesses

CWE-266

Catalog version

2026.10.30

LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin contains privilege escalation vulnerability that is exposed via the user-end cPanel plugin, which can be abused by any cPanel user account to execute arbitrary scripts with root privileges.

Required action (CISA)

Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

Ransomware use: CISA does not mark known use of this vulnerability in ransomware campaigns.

Links in CISA's notes

• https://blog.litespeedtech.com/2026/05/21/security-update-for-litespeed-cpanel-plugin/
• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-48172

Read on 2026-11-02T23:39:54.475Z under licence cisa-kev-cc0@b0067899 from https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/feeds/known_exploited_vulnerabilities.json

NVD analysis

Status

Analyzed

Published

2026-05-21T02:16:33.760

Last modified

2026-10-07T19:17:37.590

Weaknesses

CWE-266

LiteSpeed User-End cPanel Plugin before 2.4.5 allows privilege escalation (possibly to root), as exploited in the wild in May 2026. Detection is best done via a command line of grep -rE "cpanel_jsonapi_func=redisAble" /var/cpanel/logs /usr/local/cpanel/logs/ 2>/dev/null in Bash. If you get no output, you have not been hit with exploitation of the vulnerability. If there is output, we recommend you examine the IP addresses in the list, determine if they are valid IP addresses, and if not, block them. To determine damage done, examine the system logs for use by the detected IP addresses. The issue is related to mishandling of Redis enable/disable features. The recommended minimum version is 2.4.7.

References

• https://blog.litespeedtech.com/2026/05/21/security-update-for-litespeed-cpanel-plugin/ (Vendor Advisory)
• https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/litespeed-web-server/control-panel-support/cpanel (Product)
• https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/litespeed-web-server/control-panel-support/release-log (Release Notes)
• https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2026-48172 (US Government Resource)

This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.

Read on 2026-11-02T23:42:31.494Z under licence nvd-api-terms-of-use@ff2a5288 from https://services.nvd.nist.gov/rest/json/cves/2.0?cveId=CVE-2026-48172

CVE record

Assigner

mitre

State

PUBLISHED

Published

2026-05-21T00:38:04.489Z

Updated

2026-10-07T18:11:52.501Z

Problem types

CWE-266 Incorrect Privilege Assignment

LiteSpeed User-End cPanel Plugin before 2.4.5 allows privilege escalation (possibly to root), as exploited in the wild in May 2026. Detection is best done via a command line of grep -rE "cpanel_jsonapi_func=redisAble" /var/cpanel/logs /usr/local/cpanel/logs/ 2>/dev/null in Bash. If you get no output, you have not been hit with exploitation of the vulnerability. If there is output, we recommend you examine the IP addresses in the list, determine if they are valid IP addresses, and if not, block them. To determine damage done, examine the system logs for use by the detected IP addresses. The issue is related to mishandling of Redis enable/disable features. The recommended minimum version is 2.4.7.

References

• https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/litespeed-web-server/control-panel-support/cpanel
• https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/litespeed-web-server/control-panel-support/release-log
• https://blog.litespeedtech.com/2026/05/21/security-update-for-litespeed-cpanel-plugin/

Read on 2026-11-03T02:20:16.810Z under licence cve-terms-of-use@81bfa2f3 from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/main/cves/2026/48xxx/CVE-2026-48172.json

Defensive techniques (MITRE D3FEND)

D3FEND maps these defensive techniques to the weakness (CWE) that NVD lists for this CVE, through the digital artifacts the weakness affects. D3FEND does not say they stop this vulnerability.

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