CVE-2023-4239

Real Estate Manager <= 7.2 - Arbitrary Usermeta Update to Authenticated (Subscriber+) Privilege Escalation

2023-08-08 00:00
István Márton

Strategic Overview

Status
Unpatched
Affected Plugin
Real Estate Manager – Property Listing and Agent Management
Affected Version
<= 7.2
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
CVE
CVE-2023-4239
View all Real Estate Manager – Property Listing and Agent Management vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2023-4239 is a high-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the Real Estate Manager WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 7.2. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Subscriber level or above. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed August 2023, reported by István Márton.

Vulnerability Overview

The Real Estate Manager plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in versions up to, and including, 7.2 due to insufficient restriction on the 'rem_save_profile_front' function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with minimal permissions such as a subscriber, to modify their user role by supplying the 'wp_capabilities' parameter during a profile update.

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 interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management

Real Estate Manager <= 7.2 carries this weakness at rem_save_profile_front, and reaching it takes an account at Subscriber level or above. Improper privilege management means the code lets an account end up with capabilities its role should not have.

It converts a low-privileged account into an administrative one, which makes every other restriction on the site irrelevant. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Real Estate Manager yet, so installs running <= 7.2 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?

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. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-4239https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d83d1fd0-6e21-406e-a7c0-89d26eabbb32https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-4239

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C