CVE-2024-9637

School Management System – WPSchoolPress <= 2.2.10 - Insecure Direct Object Reference to Authenticated (Teacher+) Account Takeover/Privilege Escalation

2024-10-25 20:05
wesley (wcraft)

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.2.11
Affected Plugin
School Management System – WPSchoolPress
Affected Version
<= 2.2.10
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-639 · Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key
CVE
CVE-2024-9637
View all School Management System – WPSchoolPress vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2024-9637 is a high-severity Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key vulnerability in the School Management System WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.2.10. 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 Teacher level or above. The issue is fixed in version 2.2.11; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2024, reported by wesley (wcraft).

Vulnerability Overview

The School Management System – WPSchoolPress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation via account takeover in all versions up to, and including, 2.2.10. This is due to the plugin not properly validating a user's identity prior to updating their details like email. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with teacher-level access and above, to change arbitrary user's email addresses, including administrators, and leverage that to reset the user's password and gain access to their account.

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-639: Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key

Reaching this weakness in School Management System <= 2.2.10 takes an account at Teacher level or above. Authorization bypass through a user-controlled key, often called insecure direct object reference, means the application looks up a record by an identifier from the request without checking that the caller owns it.

Changing a number in the request is enough to read or modify other users' records, which on commerce and membership sites means customer data. For School Management System the fix is 2.2.11: builds <= 2.2.10 are affected, anything from 2.2.11 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.2.11, 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: School Management System 2.2.11 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-9637https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/411693fc-9df3-44b1-9a6f-58a6e8ef23b8https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-9637

Related records

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