Security Resilience

CVE-2023-45104

Access Control in Wpdeveloper Betterlinks ≤ 1.6.1

Published
02 January 2025
Modified
29 April 2026
CVSS Score v3.1 7.3
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
EPSS Score 0.0037 30th percentile
Risk Priority 56 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2023-45104 is a high-severity Missing Authorization (CWE-862) vulnerability in Wpdeveloper Betterlinks. Its CVSS base score is 7.3 (High).

Operationally, ranked at the 30th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) and AC-25 (Reference Monitor) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary

Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.

CVE-2023-45104 is a missing authorization vulnerability (CWE-862) in the WPDeveloper BetterLinks plugin for WordPress, stemming from incorrectly configured access control security levels. The issue affects all versions of BetterLinks up to and including 1.6.0. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.3 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L), indicating high severity due to its network accessibility and lack of prerequisites for exploitation.

Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability remotely over the network with low complexity and no user interaction required. Successful exploitation allows limited impacts across confidentiality, integrity, and availability, such as partial unauthorized access to data, minor modifications, or denial-of-service effects within the plugin's scope.

The Patchstack advisory at https://patchstack.com/database/Wordpress/Plugin/betterlinks/vulnerability/wordpress-betterlinks-plugin-1-6-0-broken-access-control-vulnerability?_s_id=cve details the broken access control issue in BetterLinks versions up to 1.6.0, recommending updates to patched versions for mitigation.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Missing Authorization vulnerability in WPDeveloper BetterLinks betterlinks allows Exploiting Incorrectly Configured Access Control Security Levels.This issue affects BetterLinks: from n/a through <= 1.6.0.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

CVEs Like This One

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CVE-2024-31274Same vendor: Wpdeveloper
CVE-2024-31284Same vendor: Wpdeveloper
CVE-2024-43323Same vendor: Wpdeveloper
CVE-2023-2086Same vendor: Wpdeveloper
CVE-2023-47760Same vendor: Wpdeveloper
CVE-2024-3609Same vendor: Wpdeveloper

Affected Assets

wpdeveloper
betterlinks
≤ 1.6.1

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

AC-3 directly requires enforcement of authorization decisions on every access request, structurally eliminating missing authorization checks.

AC-24 mandates that access control decisions are applied to each request, preventing bypass of authorization logic.

AC-25 requires a tamperproof, always-invoked reference monitor that ensures authorization checks cannot be omitted.

AC-6 reduces the set of actions reachable without proper authorization, limiting blast radius of missing checks.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

blocks

Requiring formal authorization of every access request before rights are granted ensures that checks for required permissions are performed, preventing missing authorization checks from being introduced.

blocks

A.5.18's provisioning, review, revocation and activation steps (incl. owner approval, SoD, timely removal on role/termination change) directly stop exploitation of missing authorization checks by ensuring no actor receives or retains rights to resources they should not access; the bounded remainder is that it cannot stop missing-authorization defects inside the enforcement mechanism itself once rights have been granted (e.g. flawed code that ignores the rights table).

finds

By requiring competent outsiders to verify that every function enforces the need-to-know principle, the control lowers the likelihood that missing authorization checks persist undetected.

blocks

A.5.8 integrates risk assessment, requirements elicitation and governance into the project lifecycle so that authorization needs can be identified and specified; it does not itself perform or enforce authorization checks, so the missing-authorization weakness can still be present and exploitable.

blocks

Security checkpoints and explicit authorization requirements in the design phase ensure that every sensitive function is paired with an access-control check, reducing missing-authorization defects.

blocks

A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles (least privilege, default deny, security architecture integration, zero-trust never-trust/always-verify, dynamic access control) plus design reviews that directly specify and enforce authorization checks before access; this stops most missing-authorization cases from being exploitable, with a bounded remainder in non-architectural or legacy components where the principles were documented but not fully applied.

Hardening callouts derived

DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.

  • No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-862, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.

References