CVE-2025-0515 in Buzz Club Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 01/18/2025
The Buzz Club – Night Club, DJ and Music Festival Event WordPress Theme theme for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification of data that can lead to a denial of service due to a missing capability check on the 'cmsmasters_hide_admin_notice' function in all versions up to, and including, 2.0.4. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to update option values to 'hide' on the WordPress site. This can be leveraged to update an option that would create an error on the site and deny service to legitimate users or be used to set some values to true such as registration.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/18/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-0515 affects the Buzz Club – Night Club, DJ and Music Festival Event WordPress Theme, a popular theme used for event-related websites and entertainment venues. This theme, like many WordPress themes, implements various administrative functions to manage site behavior and user experience. The flaw resides in the cmsmasters_hide_admin_notice function which fails to properly validate user capabilities before executing administrative operations. This represents a classic authorization bypass vulnerability where the theme does not properly verify that the requesting user possesses sufficient privileges to perform the requested action, creating a dangerous access control weakness that directly violates security principle of least privilege.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from a missing capability check within the theme's codebase, specifically in the cmsmasters_hide_admin_notice function. This function is designed to hide administrative notices from users but lacks proper authorization validation, allowing any authenticated user with Subscriber level access or higher to manipulate WordPress options. The vulnerability manifests when an attacker with minimal privileges attempts to modify specific WordPress options that control administrative behavior. This missing capability check directly maps to CWE-285, which describes improper authorization in software systems, and represents a fundamental flaw in the theme's privilege management architecture. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it operates within the WordPress administrative context, where unauthorized modifications can have cascading effects on site functionality and security posture.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability creates significant risks for WordPress site administrators and users who rely on the theme for their event management platforms. An authenticated attacker can leverage this flaw to manipulate core WordPress settings that control administrative behavior, potentially leading to denial of service conditions by corrupting critical options or disabling essential site functionality. The vulnerability enables attackers to set registration options to true, potentially allowing unauthorized user creation and compromising site security. This can result in service disruption for legitimate users while simultaneously providing attackers with additional attack vectors. The impact extends beyond simple denial of service, as the ability to modify core WordPress options creates opportunities for further exploitation, including potential privilege escalation and data manipulation attacks. The vulnerability affects all versions up to and including 2.0.4, making it widespread across installations that have not been updated.
The security implications of this vulnerability align with ATT&CK technique T1078.004, which covers valid accounts used for unauthorized access, as the vulnerability allows attackers with minimal privileges to perform administrative actions. Mitigation strategies should focus on immediate theme updates to version 2.0.5 or later, which presumably addresses this capability check issue. Site administrators should also implement additional monitoring of WordPress option changes and consider restricting user roles more strictly, ensuring that users with Subscriber level access cannot perform administrative operations. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of proper input validation and capability checks in web applications, particularly within content management systems where administrative functions are exposed to user interactions. Organizations should conduct thorough security reviews of all installed themes and plugins, implementing automated scanning to identify similar capability bypass issues. The incident highlights the critical need for comprehensive security testing during theme and plugin development, particularly around administrative functions that handle user privileges and system settings.