Description

The Events Made Easy WordPress plugin before 3.1.2 does not bind the payment authorization token to the payment record being charged, allowing unauthenticated attackers to pay a low amount for a cheap booking and have a separate, higher-priced booking marked as fully paid.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "5.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-06T22:16:47.207Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-06T22:16:47.207Z",
  "executiveSummary": "The Events Made Easy WordPress plugin prior to version 3.1.2 suffers from a critical business logic vulnerability involving inadequate payment authorization token validation.\nThe flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to manipulate payment processing by failing to cryptographically or logically bind a generated payment authorization token to the specific payment record intended for charge.\nConsequently, an adversary can initiate a legitimate, low-cost transaction for an inexpensive booking, obtain a valid payment authorization token, and subsequently apply that same token to a completely separate, higher-priced booking.\nThis manipulation forces the application to record the expensive booking as fully paid without executing the corresponding financial charge.\nThe risk implication is severe financial fraud, unauthorized service acquisition, and potential revenue loss for merchants utilizing the vulnerable plugin for event registration and ticket sales.\nExploitation requires network access to the target WordPress instance and the ability to interact with the plugin's booking and payment endpoints, with no prior authentication or administrative privileges required.\nMitigation requires updating the Events Made Easy plugin to version 3.1.2 or later, where proper validation and binding of payment authorization tokens to specific transaction records are enforced.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides in the payment processing and transaction verification workflow of the Events Made Easy WordPress plugin for versions before 3.1.2.\nThe root cause is a broken object level authorization or missing parameter binding flaw, wherein the backend payment processing handler accepts a payment authorization token supplied by the client without verifying whether the token corresponds explicitly to the targeted booking ID, amount, and item parameters stored in the database or session state.\nUnder normal operating conditions, a user initiates a booking, proceeds to a payment gateway (such as PayPal or Stripe), completes a transaction for a specific amount, and receives a payment authorization token or transaction reference.\nThis token is then submitted back to the plugin's payment processing endpoint to finalize the booking status.\nIn the vulnerable implementation, the application checks if the payment authorization token is valid with the payment gateway, but fails to cross-reference the monetary value or the associated database record ID bound to that specific token.\nTo execute an attack, an unauthenticated adversary performs the following step-by-step sequence: First, the attacker creates two distinct bookings within the Events Made Easy plugin—one nominal or low-priced booking (Booking A) and one high-value booking (Booking B).\nSecond, the attacker initiates the checkout process for the low-priced Booking A and completes the minimal financial transaction through the integrated payment gateway, successfully generating a valid payment authorization token.\nThird, instead of finalizing Booking A, the attacker intercepts or crafts a subsequent HTTP request directed at the plugin's payment verification endpoint, substituting the booking identifier of Booking A with the booking identifier of the high-priced Booking B while retaining the valid payment authorization token obtained from the cheap transaction.\nFourth, the vulnerable server-side logic processes the request, validates the token against the payment gateway—which confirms the token is legitimate—and subsequently marks Booking B as fully paid in the database without validating that the paid amount matches the cost of Booking B.\nThe post-exploitation impact includes unauthorized acquisition of high-value event tickets or registrations, financial discrepancy, and complete bypass of payment controls.\nThe vulnerability is exposed over the network via standard HTTP/HTTPS requests to the WordPress plugin endpoints, requiring zero privileges and no user interaction beyond the attacker's own initiation of the low-cost transaction."
}