CVE-2024-13653: ZoxPress - The All-In-One WordPress News Theme <= 2.12.0 - Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Subscriber+) Arbitrary Options Update

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-02-12 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-862

Description

The ZoxPress - The All-In-One WordPress News Theme theme for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification of data that can lead to privilege escalation due to a missing capability check on the 'backup_options' and 'restore_options' functions in all versions up to, and including, 2.12.0. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to update arbitrary options on the WordPress site. This can be leveraged to update the default role for registration to administrator and enable user registration for attackers to gain administrative user access to a vulnerable site.

Affected products

MVPThemes ZoxPress - The All-In-One WordPress News Theme: before 2.12.1 — fixed in 2.12.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: MVPThemes ZoxPress - The All-In-One WordPress News Theme 2.12.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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