Option Editor <= 1.0 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Arbitrary Options Update
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Unpatched
- Affected Plugin
- Option Editor
- Affected Version
<= 1.0- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2024-13852
At a glance
CVE-2024-13852 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Option Editor WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.0. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed February 2025, reported by Colin Xu.
Vulnerability Overview
The Option Editor plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in version 1.0. This is due to missing nonce validation on the plugin_page() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update arbitrary options on the WordPress site via a forged request, granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link. 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.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed, and no privileges on the target site. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.
CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Option Editor <= 1.0 carries this weakness at plugin_page(), and reaching it takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Cross-site request forgery abuses the fact that browsers attach a victim's cookies to any request, so a state-changing action that only checks who you are, not whether you meant to act, can be triggered from another site.
An attacker who gets a logged-in user to load a crafted page can perform that action as them, with the impact scaling to whatever the victim's role is allowed to do. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Option Editor yet, so installs running <= 1.0 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.
Remediation
No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Option Editor: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C