CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-24579 — Bold-Themes Bold Page Builder security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.8

The bt_bb_get_grid AJAX action of the Bold Page Builder WordPress plugin before 3.1.6 passes user input into the unserialize() function without any validation or sanitisation, which could lead to a PHP Object Injection. Even though the plugin did not contain a suitable gadget to fully exploit the issue, other installed plugins on the blog could allow such issue to be exploited and lead to RCE in some cases.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.8 (3.1)
Published
2021-08-30
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
php/wordpress
Weaknesses
CWE-502

Affected products

  • bold-themes / bold_page_builder

Matched remediation archetype

Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction

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Check exposure

  • Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
  • Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
  • Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.

Remediate safely

  • Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
  • If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
  • Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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