Overview
This article provides a detailed technical analysis of a notable cybersecurity vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-3761, that affects the popular WordPress plugin, My Tickets – Accessible Event Ticketing. The plugin, which is used widely across various WordPress-based websites for managing event ticketing, has been found to have a critical flaw that could potentially lead to significant security breaches. This vulnerability is particularly significant because it can enable an attacker with basic subscriber-level access to escalate their privileges to an administrator level, thereby gaining full control over the victim’s system.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-3761
Severity: High, CVSS Severity Score: 8.8
Attack Vector: Remote
Privileges Required: Low (Subscriber level or above)
User Interaction: Required
Impact: System compromise and potential data leakage
Affected Products
No phone number, email, or personal info required.
Product | Affected Versions
My Tickets – Accessible Event Ticketing | All versions up to and including 2.0.16
How the Exploit Works
The exploit takes advantage of inadequate access restrictions in the mt_save_profile() function in the My Tickets WordPress plugin. This function is supposed to limit the ability to update user roles to only authorized users. However, due to a flaw in its implementation, even unauthorized users with a subscriber-level access can invoke this function and update their roles. An authenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted request, thereby escalating their privileges to an administrator level.
Conceptual Example Code
An attacker might exploit the vulnerability using an HTTP POST request similar to the following:
POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=mt_save_profile HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
user_id=10&role=administrator
In this hypothetical example, the attacker sends a POST request to the mt_save_profile action, indicating their user_id and specifying the role they wish to obtain (in this case, “administrator”). A successful exploit would result in the server updating the user’s role to the specified role, granting the attacker administrator privileges.
Mitigation
Users of the My Tickets – Accessible Event Ticketing WordPress plugin are strongly urged to apply the vendor’s patch immediately. If unable to do so, users should consider implementing a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as a temporary mitigation measure. This can help detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability until the patch can be applied.