CVE-2024-13653
Published: 12 February 2025
Summary
CVE-2024-13653 is a high-severity Missing Authorization (CWE-862) vulnerability in Mvpthemes Zoxpress. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 25.0th 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-3 (Access Enforcement) and AC-6 (Least Privilege).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2024-13653 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the ZoxPress - The All-In-One WordPress News Theme for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 2.12.0. The issue stems from a missing capability check on the 'backup_options' and 'restore_options' functions, enabling unauthorized modification of data. This flaw, classified under CWE-862 (Missing Authorization), carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H), indicating high severity due to its potential for significant impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Authenticated attackers with Subscriber-level access or higher can exploit this vulnerability remotely over the network with low complexity and no user interaction required. By calling the affected functions, they can update arbitrary WordPress options, such as changing the default user role for new registrations to administrator and enabling user registration. This allows attackers to create accounts with full administrative privileges on the vulnerable site.
Advisories from Wordfence provide detailed threat intelligence on the vulnerability, including exploitation details. The theme's page on ThemeForest serves as the primary source for the affected software. Security practitioners should consult these references—https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/b4599c7f-5e5d-4571-97d9-54d6fd0c9c63?source=cve and https://themeforest.net/item/zoxpress-allinone-wordpress-news-theme/25586170—for patch information and mitigation guidance, as no specific fixes are detailed in the CVE description.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-51706
Vulnerability details
The ZoxPress - The All-In-One WordPress News Theme theme for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification of data that can lead to privilege escalation due to a missing capability check on the 'backup_options' and 'restore_options' functions in all versions up…
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to, and including, 2.12.0. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to update arbitrary options on the WordPress site. This can be leveraged to update the default role for registration to administrator and enable user registration for attackers to gain administrative user access to a vulnerable site.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Direct privilege escalation via missing authorization check allowing arbitrary option modification to gain admin rights.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly enforces approved authorizations for access to system resources, mitigating the missing capability checks on backup_options and restore_options functions.
Applies least privilege to restrict subscriber-level users from performing unauthorized modifications leading to privilege escalation.
Restricts logical access associated with changes to system configuration such as arbitrary WordPress options updated by vulnerable theme functions.