CVE-2024-12919

Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction <= 2.13.7 - Authentication Bypass via pms_payment_id

2025-01-13 00:00
wesley (wcraft)

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.13.8
Affected Plugin
Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction
Affected Version
<= 2.13.7
CVSS
9.8Critical
Weakness type
CWE-287 · Improper Authentication
CVE
CVE-2024-12919
View all Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2024-12919 is a critical-severity Improper Authentication vulnerability in the Paid Membership Subscriptions WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.13.7. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.13.8; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2025, reported by wesley (wcraft).

Vulnerability Overview

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 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.

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, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-287: Improper Authentication

Paid Membership Subscriptions <= 2.13.7 carries this weakness at pms_payment_id, and reaching it takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Improper authentication means the mechanism that proves who a caller is can be satisfied without the secret it was supposed to require.

An attacker authenticates as another user — administrators included — without ever knowing a password, so password policies and login rate limits never come into play. For Paid Membership Subscriptions the fix is 2.13.8: builds <= 2.13.7 are affected, anything from 2.13.8 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.13.8, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. None of that substitutes for the fix: Paid Membership Subscriptions 2.13.8 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-12919https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d3a4fa4d-a7d2-4890-b0f5-5fe69bc5e7achttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-12919

Related records

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