Vulnerability report

Exploited in the wild Confirmed confidence In CISA KEV

CVE-2026-48172

cPanel Plugin Privilege Escalation

LiteSpeed Technologies / cPanel Plugin · affected before 2.4.7

Watch CVE-2026-48172 Browse KEV feed
Severity
CVSS 10.0 · Critical
Confidence
Confirmed
Exploit status
Exploited in the wild
EPSS
1.0%
First observed
—
Last observed
—

Decision summary

What security teams need to know first

Direct answers before the deeper technical record.

What it is

CVE-2026-48172 is an unauthenticated vulnerability affecting LiteSpeed Technologies cPanel Plugin, WHM Plugin. LiteSpeed User-End cPanel Plugin before 2.4.5 allows privilege escalation (possibly to root), as exploited...

Is it exploited?

Yes. Previdian tracks this CVE as a known exploited vulnerability. Confidence is confirmed. Listed in CISA KEV. Also confirmed by third-party sources.

Who is affected?

LiteSpeed Technologies / cPanel Plugin affected before 2.4.7.

What should we do?

Prioritize remediation. Validate affected assets and apply vendor fixes on an accelerated timeline.

Overview

cPanel Plugin Privilege Escalation

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 Technologies Affected
cPanel Plugin WHM Plugin/cPanel Plugin
Before 2.4.7
LiteSpeed Technologies Affected
WHM Plugin WHM Plugin/cPanel Plugin
Before 5.3.1.0
Published
21 May 2026
Exploitation Reported
01 Jun 2026
Attack vector
Remote
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None

Tags

cisa redis

CVE References

Exploitation evidence

Why Previdian marks this CVE as exploited

Third-party attestation and first-party sensor observation are shown separately so teams can judge the evidence chain.

Exploited in the wild

CVE

Recorded 01 Jun 2026

A trusted third party reported exploitation.

Known exploited vulnerability sources

Per-source evidence links for KEV attestations are available through the Previdian Pro API.

Learn about Pro API access
Source Added
CVE First 2026-06-01 13:29 UTC
CISA 2026-06-02 14:00 UTC

Detection

Operational artifacts and observed signals

Make the evidence actionable in scanner, SOC, and edge-control workflows.

Observed signals

Request targets
User-Agents
Callback hosts
0
0
0

Request targets and User-Agents available in Pro. Callback host details available in Enterprise.

Scanner coverage

No scanner integrations recorded yet.

Virtual patch status

No Previdian virtual patch is currently available. Future rules ship for ModSecurity, Cloudflare, and AWS WAF.

Learn about virtual patches →

No detection artifacts or sensor request patterns are available for this CVE yet.

Check back as sensor telemetry and scanner integrations are updated.

Risk and context

Severity, weaknesses, and research context

CVSS v4.0

10.0 Critical

Potential damage if exploited. Separate from whether attackers are using it.

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

EPSS

1.0%

Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Previdian's warning comes from evidence, not this score.

Weaknesses

Incorrect Privilege Assignment CWE-266

Recent mention · The Hacker News

LiteSpeed Enterprise Flaw Could Let One Hosting Account Gain Root Access on a Shared Server

A critical vulnerability in LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise could let a low-privilege website user gain root access on a shared-hosting server, cPanel warned in an advisory published on September 14. On such servers, many customers' sites run on a single machine, and an...

Read full advisory

All CVSS Scores

CVSS v4.0 10.0 Critical

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

CVSS v3.1 9.8 Critical

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

All Mentions

Recent mention · The Hacker News

LiteSpeed Enterprise Flaw Could Let One Hosting Account Gain Root Access on a Shared Server

The Hacker News · 15 Sep 2026

A critical vulnerability in LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise could let a low-privilege website user gain root access on a shared-hosting server, cPanel warned in an advisory published on September 14. On such servers, many customers' sites run on a single machine, and an attacker with one of those hosting accounts could exploit the flaw to access or alter other sites and the server itself,

Recent mention · All CISA Advisories

CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

All CISA Advisories · 26 May 2026

CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.  CVE-2026-48172 LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin Privilege Escalation Vulnerability This type of vulnerability is a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and poses significant risks to the federal enterprise. Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the KEV Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal...

Timeline

From disclosure to observed exploitation

  1. 14:00 UTC

    Added to CISA KEV

    Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

  2. 13:29 UTC

    Added to Previdian KEV Feed

    High-confidence, third-party attested exploitation

  3. 00:38 UTC

    CVE published

    Vulnerability disclosed publicly

  4. 00:38 UTC

    CVE ID reserved

    Identifier reserved by the CNA

Pro API

Automate this intelligence

Confidence, exploit status, sensor telemetry, PoCs, scanner integrations, mentions, and tags are available programmatically for VM, SOC, and CTI workflows.

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  • Evidence confidence and provenance
  • First-party sensor telemetry
  • PoC and scanner references
  • Affected versions and enrichment
  • Automation-ready JSON delivery

GET /api/v2/pro/kevs/CVE-2026-48172

Sample API response 
{
  "cve_id": "CVE-2026-48172",
  "confidence": "Confirmed",
  "cvss_score": 10.0,
  "cvss_estimated": false,
  "epss_score": 0.01011,
  "exploit_status": {
    "exploited_in_the_wild": true,
    "active_exploitation_observed": false
  },
  "sensor_telemetry": { "attempts": 0, "sensors": 0 }
}