CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2024-9161 — Rankmath Seo security vulnerability
The Rank Math SEO – AI SEO Tools to Dominate SEO Rankings plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification and loss of data due to a missing capability check on the 'update_metadata' function in all versions up to, and including, 1.0.228. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to insert new and update existing metadata beginning with 'rank_math', and delete arbitrary existing user metadata and term metadata. Deleting existing usermeta can cause a loss of access to the administrator dashboard for any registered users, including Administrators.
- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 6.5 (3.1)
- Published
- 2024-10-05
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- php/wordpress
- Weaknesses
- CWE-862
Affected products
- rankmath / seo
Matched remediation archetype
Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
- Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
- Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.
Remediate safely
- Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
- Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
- Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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