Exploited

CVE-2026-48172

LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin · Web and application servers

LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

At a glance

Exploited. Added to CISA’s catalog of exploited vulnerabilities on May 26, 2026.

Affected product: LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin (category Web and application servers, indicative classification). Name in CISA’s catalog: LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin.

What should I do?

Apply the patches or mitigations from LiteSpeed; if none are available, stop using the product. For cloud services, follow the guidance from LiteSpeed.

Deadline set by CISA for US federal agencies: 3 days (due May 29, 2026). It only binds those agencies, but it is a useful measure of urgency.

The vendor’s specific advisory is listed in the NVD references: CVE-2026-48172 on the NVD website.

Original text of the 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.

Timeline

May 21, 2026 Vulnerability published Publication date (NVD)
May 26, 2026 Exploitation confirmed Added to CISA’s KEV catalog
May 29, 2026 CISA deadline Remediation deadline set for US federal agencies

The facts, with their sources

Exploitation confirmed: Yes, on May 26, 2026 Date added to the catalog of exploited vulnerabilities. Exploitation itself may have started earlier. Source: KEV catalog, collected September 29, 2026 at 14:57 UTC
Ransomware: No known use to date That does not guarantee it is not being used: the information is not public. Source: KEV catalog, collected September 29, 2026 at 14:57 UTC
Hunt for compromise: Not requested by CISA Source: KEV catalog, collected September 29, 2026 at 14:57 UTC
CISA required action: Apply the patches or mitigations from LiteSpeed; if none are available, stop using the product. For cloud services, follow the guidance from LiteSpeed. Rewritten by this site from CISA’s original text. Source: KEV catalog, collected September 29, 2026 at 14:57 UTC
CISA deadline: May 29, 2026, 3 days Set for US federal agencies: a measure of urgency, not an obligation elsewhere. Source: KEV catalog, collected September 29, 2026 at 14:57 UTC
Vulnerability published: May 21, 2026 Source: National Vulnerability Database (NVD), collected September 29, 2026 at 15:00 UTC
Product according to CISA: LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin Filed by this site under “Web and application servers” (indicative classification). Source: KEV catalog, collected September 29, 2026 at 14:57 UTC
CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H Technical detail of the score: attack vector, complexity, impact. Source: National Vulnerability Database (NVD), collected September 29, 2026 at 15:00 UTC

Severity and activity

9.8 / 10 CVSS severity: critical

Score from the NVD. Collected Sep 29, 2026.

— Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days (EPSS)

FIRST’s EPSS model. Since exploitation is already confirmed, this figure is mostly useful to compare activity. Collected Sep 29, 2026.

Description

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.

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.

Summary from CISA (KEV catalog).

CERT-FR advisories

No advisory among the latest CERT-FR publications this site follows. That does not mean there are none.

Information reused under the Open Licence 2.0 (Etalab); the date of last update is shown for each advisory. This site is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by ANSSI.

Sources for this page

CISA KEV catalog: exploitation, date added, required action, deadline, ransomware.
NVD (NIST): CVSS severity, publication date, description, vendor references.
EPSS (FIRST): probability of exploitation.
CERT-FR: advisories and alerts (in French).
Brand and category: indicative classification by this site (method).