CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-5235 — Kutethemes Ovic Responsive Wpbakery security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.8

The Ovic Responsive WPBakery WordPress plugin before 1.2.9 does not limit which options can be updated via some of its AJAX actions, which may allow attackers with a subscriber+ account to update blog options, such as 'users_can_register' and 'default_role'. It also unserializes user input in the process, which may lead to Object Injection attacks.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.8 (3.1)
Published
2024-01-08
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
php/wordpress
Weaknesses
CWE-502

Affected products

  • kutethemes / ovic_responsive_wpbakery

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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