Description

The OpenStation — Desktop Windows, Dock & Virtual Desktops for WP Admin plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to authorization bypass in all versions up to, and including, 1.1.7. This is due to the plugin not properly verifying that a user is authorized to perform an action. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with custom-level access and above, to read the title, status, date, permalink, and a 300-character content excerpt of any private, draft, pending, or future post, as well as the content and AI-moderation verdicts of unapproved and spam comments. Any authenticated user with the 'read' capability can self-enable the required AI feature by visiting the /openstation/ portal and toggling their own ai.enabled setting via the POST /desktop-mode/v1/os-settings endpoint, removing any practical barrier to exploitation.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "4.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-25T07:16:53.857Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-25T07:16:53.857Z",
  "executiveSummary": "The OpenStation — Desktop Windows, Dock & Virtual Desktops for WP Admin plugin is affected by an authorization bypass vulnerability present in all versions up to and including 1.1.7.\nThe vulnerability originates from inadequate permission checks within the plugin's API endpoints, failing to restrict access to sensitive information based on user roles or capabilities.\nAn authenticated attacker with 'read' level access or higher can exploit this flaw to retrieve sensitive metadata and content from private, draft, pending, or future posts.\nFurthermore, the vulnerability allows unauthorized access to unapproved and spam comment contents, including internal AI-moderation verdicts.\nThe risk is exacerbated by the ability for any authenticated user to programmatically enable the required AI feature, effectively bypassing any administrative access controls intended to restrict the plugin's functionality.\nThis represents a significant information disclosure threat, allowing unauthorized entities to harvest internal content, draft strategies, and moderation data from the WordPress environment.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is improper access control validation within the OpenStation plugin's API handling logic. Specifically, the plugin's REST API endpoints do not perform sufficient verification of the requesting user's authorization level before fulfilling requests for content or configuration modifications.\nThe vulnerability allows an attacker to interact with the /desktop-mode/v1/os-settings endpoint to manipulate user-specific configuration settings. By sending a POST request to this endpoint, any authenticated user can modify their 'ai.enabled' flag. This action removes the functional barriers imposed by the plugin, enabling features that should only be accessible to authorized users.\nOnce the 'ai.enabled' setting is active, the attacker can leverage the plugin's API to perform unauthorized read operations. Because the underlying logic fails to validate if the authenticated user has sufficient privileges to access specific post types or comments, the plugin returns metadata and excerpts from restricted resources.\nAttack flow: 1. The attacker authenticates as a user with at least 'read' capability. 2. The attacker sends a crafted POST request to '/desktop-mode/v1/os-settings' to set 'ai.enabled' to true. 3. Upon successful toggling of the setting, the attacker queries internal API endpoints provided by the OpenStation plugin. 4. The plugin fails to verify authorization, returning titles, statuses, dates, permalinks, and 300-character content excerpts of private, draft, pending, or future posts. 5. Additionally, the attacker can retrieve the full text and AI-moderation verdicts for unapproved and spam comments.\nAffected versions include all iterations up to and including 1.1.7. The vulnerability exists within the plugin's API architecture, specifically targeting the logic governing data retrieval and user-level settings modification. The exposure is network-based, reachable by any authenticated user, and requires no specialized privileges beyond the base 'read' capability standard in WordPress."
}