Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:L/A:NCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2024-12365 is a high-severity Missing Authorization (CWE-862) vulnerability in Boldgrid W3 Total Cache. Its CVSS base score is 8.5 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 22% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; 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.
The W3 Total Cache plugin for WordPress contains a missing capability check in the is_w3tc_admin_page function across all versions through 2.8.1. This flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-12365 and assigned CWE-862, permits unauthorized data access and carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 8.5.
Authenticated users with Subscriber privileges or above can retrieve the plugin nonce and leverage it to execute restricted actions. Successful exploitation yields information disclosure, exhaustion of service plan quotas, and the ability to issue arbitrary outbound web requests from the affected site, which may reach internal services or retrieve cloud instance metadata.
The supplied references consist solely of links to plugin source files and contain no advisory text or patch guidance. The associated EPSS score has remained flat at 0.2296 with no observed rise after disclosure.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-50808
Vulnerability Data
The W3 Total Cache plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized access of data due to a missing capability check on the is_w3tc_admin_page function in all versions up to, and including, 2.8.1. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with…
more
Subscriber-level access and above, to obtain the plugin's nonce value and perform unauthorized actions, resulting in information disclosure, service plan limits consumption as well as making web requests to arbitrary locations originating from the web application that can be used to query information from internal services, including instance metadata on cloud-based applications.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.