CVE-2026-12144: Wholesale for WooCommerce <= 2.0.5 - Authenticated (Author+) Privilege Escalation via 'user_role_set' Parameter

The Wholesale for WooCommerce plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.0.5. This is due to the saverequestsmeta() function applying only sanitizetextfield() to the userroleset POST parameter before passing it directly to WPUser::addrole(), with no allowlist validation against permitted wholesale roles and no capability check such as currentusercan('promoteusers') or currentusercan('manageoptions'). This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with author-level access and above to escalate their privileges to administrator by supplying administrator as the userroleset value in a crafted request. The function is gated only by a nonce (requestuserrolenonce) that is rendered in the meta box on the wwprequests post edit screen; because the post type is registered with capabilitytype => 'post', any author-level user who has authored a wwprequests post — such as one created via the wholesale registration form — can access this nonce and submit the role-assignment request.