CVE-2024-1316 in Event Tickets and Registration
Summary
by MITRE • 03/04/2024
The Event Tickets and Registration WordPress plugin before 5.8.1, Events Tickets Plus WordPress plugin before 5.9.1 does not prevent users with at least the contributor role from leaking the existence of certain events they shouldn't have access to. (e.g. draft, private, pending review, pw-protected, and trashed events).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/28/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-1316 affects two widely used WordPress plugins: Event Tickets and Events Tickets Plus. This security flaw represents a significant information disclosure issue that undermines the access control mechanisms implemented by these event management systems. The vulnerability specifically targets the authorization controls that should prevent users from discovering the existence of events that are not intended for their viewing privileges. The affected versions of these plugins fail to properly enforce access restrictions for events that are in various non-public states including drafts, private events, pending review status, password-protected events, and trashed events. This represents a clear violation of the principle of least privilege and information hiding that are fundamental to secure software design.
The technical implementation flaw stems from insufficient validation of user permissions when processing event queries and responses. Attackers with contributor-level access can exploit this weakness to determine whether specific events exist within the system even when those events are marked as private or restricted. This occurs because the plugin's query handling does not adequately filter results based on user capabilities or event status, allowing unauthorized users to perform reconnaissance and gather information about events that should remain hidden from their view. The vulnerability essentially creates a side-channel attack vector where the mere existence of certain events can be inferred through subtle differences in system responses, violating the security principle that access control decisions should be made consistently and transparently.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple information leakage to potentially enable more sophisticated attacks. An attacker with contributor privileges can systematically discover the existence of private events, which may contain sensitive information about organizational activities, planned initiatives, or confidential business operations. This reconnaissance capability allows threat actors to identify targets for further exploitation or to understand the scope of event management within an organization. The vulnerability particularly affects organizations that rely on WordPress for event management where event data may contain proprietary information, strategic plans, or sensitive scheduling details. According to CWE-200, this represents an information disclosure weakness that can lead to further security compromises when combined with other vulnerabilities or attack vectors.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigations including updating to the patched versions of both Event Tickets and Events Tickets Plus plugins. The recommended remediation involves upgrading to Event Tickets plugin version 5.8.1 and Events Tickets Plus plugin version 5.9.1, which contain the necessary access control fixes. Additionally, administrators should review and tighten user role permissions, ensuring that contributor-level users do not have access to sensitive event data unless explicitly required. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this vulnerability under T1212, which involves exploitation of information disclosure flaws, and T1566, which covers social engineering techniques that may be employed to gather information about system components. Security teams should also implement monitoring for unusual query patterns that might indicate attempts to exploit this information disclosure vulnerability, as this type of reconnaissance activity can precede more damaging attacks targeting the same systems.