CVE-2024-12281

Critical

Published: 05 March 2025

Published

05 March 2025

Modified

15 April 2026

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS Score 0.0025 48.7th percentile

Risk Priority 20 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2024-12281 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management (CWE-269) vulnerability in Themeforest (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 48.7th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-2 (Account Management) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).

Threat & Defense at a Glance

What attackers do: exploitation maps to Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) and 1 other technique. What defenders deploy: see the NIST 800-53 controls recommended below.

Threat & Defense Details

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI

AC-2 Account Management good match

prevent

AC-2 requires managed account provisioning processes that assign roles based on organizational policy, preventing unauthenticated users from self-assigning elevated privileges like Administrator during registration.

SI-10 Information Input Validation good match

prevent

SI-10 mandates server-side validation of user inputs, including role parameters in registration requests, to reject unauthorized elevated roles and block the privilege escalation exploit.

AC-6 Least Privilege partial match

prevent

AC-6 enforces least privilege by ensuring accounts are granted only necessary access rights, mitigating the impact of improperly self-assigned elevated roles.

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access

Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.

attack.mitre.org →

T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

The vulnerability is a remote unauthenticated flaw in a public-facing WordPress theme that directly enables exploitation of the application for privilege escalation by allowing arbitrary high-privilege role assignment during account registration.

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

NVD Description

The Homey theme for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.4.2. This is due to the plugin allowing users who are registering new accounts to set their own role. This makes it possible…

for unauthenticated attackers to gain elevated privileges by creating an account with the Administrator, Editor, or Shop Manager role.

Deeper analysisAI

CVE-2024-12281 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Homey theme for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 2.4.2. The flaw stems from the theme permitting users registering new accounts to arbitrarily set their own role, such as Administrator, Editor, or Shop Manager, which bypasses standard WordPress user role assignment controls. Published on 2025-03-05, it is mapped to CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management) and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), marking it as critical.

Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability remotely with low complexity and no user interaction. By submitting a registration request with a self-assigned elevated role, they can create an account granting full administrative access or equivalent privileges, potentially allowing full site compromise including data exfiltration, content modification, or further malware deployment.

Advisories provide further details on the issue, including the Wordfence threat intelligence report at https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/3b93c33c-4ab1-48a2-b84d-3cb38ccea829?source=cve and the theme's listing on ThemeForest at https://themeforest.net/item/homey-booking-wordpress-theme/23338013. Security practitioners should consult these for patch availability and remediation guidance.