CVE-2024-13525 is a vulnerability identified in the Customer Email Verification for WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 2.9.4. The flaw is categorized under CWE-200, indicating exposure of sensitive information to unauthorized actors. Specifically, authenticated users with at least Contributor-level privileges can exploit a shortcode feature to retrieve sensitive data, including email addresses and hashed passwords of any user on the site. The vulnerability stems from insufficient access control checks on the shortcode functionality, allowing privilege escalation within the application context. The CVSS 3.1 base score is 6.5 (medium severity), with the vector indicating network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), unchanged scope (S:U), high confidentiality impact (C:H), no integrity (I:N), and no availability impact (A:N). This means an attacker must be authenticated with contributor or higher privileges but can remotely exploit the vulnerability without additional user interaction. The exposure of hashed passwords and emails can facilitate further attacks such as credential stuffing, phishing, or social engineering. No patches or known exploits are currently reported, but the vulnerability is publicly disclosed and should be addressed promptly. The plugin is widely used in WooCommerce-based WordPress e-commerce sites, making the vulnerability relevant to many organizations relying on these platforms.

The primary impact of CVE-2024-13525 is the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive user information, specifically email addresses and hashed passwords. This breach of confidentiality can lead to secondary attacks such as credential stuffing, phishing campaigns, and targeted social engineering attacks. Organizations operating WooCommerce stores with multiple contributors or editors are at higher risk, as these roles can exploit the vulnerability. While the integrity and availability of the system are not directly affected, the loss of sensitive data can damage customer trust, lead to regulatory compliance issues (e.g., GDPR, CCPA), and potentially result in financial losses due to fraud or remediation costs. The vulnerability's exploitation requires authenticated access, which somewhat limits the attack surface but does not eliminate risk, especially in environments with many contributors or where account compromise is possible. Given WooCommerce's global popularity, the impact can be widespread across various industries relying on WordPress e-commerce solutions.

1. Immediately restrict Contributor-level and higher user access to trusted personnel only, minimizing the number of users with such privileges. 2. Disable or restrict the use of the vulnerable shortcode in the Customer Email Verification plugin until a patch is available. 3. Monitor and audit user roles and permissions regularly to detect any unauthorized privilege escalations. 4. Implement strong authentication mechanisms (e.g., MFA) to reduce the risk of account compromise for contributors and higher roles. 5. Keep WordPress core, WooCommerce, and all plugins up to date; apply security patches promptly once the vendor releases a fix for this vulnerability. 6. Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing focused on WordPress plugins and user privilege boundaries. 7. Consider using web application firewalls (WAFs) with custom rules to detect and block suspicious shortcode usage patterns. 8. Educate site administrators and developers about the risks of exposing sensitive data through shortcode or other plugin features. 9. Backup site data regularly to enable recovery in case of compromise. 10. Review and limit the exposure of sensitive data in plugin outputs and logs to reduce risk.