CVE-2024-12919
Published: 14 January 2025
Summary
CVE-2024-12919 is a critical-severity Improper Authentication (CWE-287) vulnerability in Cozmoslabs Membership \& Content Restriction - Paid Member Subscriptions. 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 36.2th 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 IA-2 (Identification and Authentication (Organizational Users)) and IA-5 (Authenticator Management).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2024-12919 is an authentication bypass vulnerability in the Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction plugin for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 2.13.7. The flaw occurs in the pms_pb_payment_redirect_link function, which authenticates users based solely on a user-controlled value from the 'pms_payment_id' parameter without performing any further identity validation.
Unauthenticated attackers with knowledge of a valid payment ID can exploit this vulnerability remotely over the network with low complexity and no user interaction required. Successful exploitation allows them to log in as any user who has made a purchase on the targeted site, potentially granting access to sensitive data and privileged actions. The vulnerability 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) and is linked to CWE-287 (Improper Authentication).
Mitigation details are provided in the plugin's WordPress trac changeset 3214706 at https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3214706/paid-member-subscriptions, which includes the patch. Additional threat intelligence is available from Wordfence at https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d3a4fa4d-a7d2-4890-b0f5-5fe69bc5e7ac?source=cve. Security practitioners should update to a patched version beyond 2.13.7 immediately.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-51188
Vulnerability details
The Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Authentication Bypass in all versions up to, and including, 2.13.7. This is due to the pms_pb_payment_redirect_link function using the user-controlled value supplied…
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via the 'pms_payment_id' parameter to authenticate users without any further identity validation. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers with knowledge of a valid payment ID to log in as any user who has made a purchase on the targeted site.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Auth bypass in public-facing WordPress plugin directly enables remote exploitation (T1190) to obtain and use valid user accounts without credentials (T1078).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Requires robust identification and authentication for users, directly preventing bypass vulnerabilities that rely on unvalidated parameters like pms_payment_id for login.
Mandates validation of user-controlled inputs such as the pms_payment_id parameter before using them in authentication decisions, addressing the core exploitation vector.
Ensures proper management and verification of authenticators, preventing authentication based solely on unverified user-supplied values like payment IDs without identity confirmation.