Description

Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key vulnerability in Monetizemore Advanced Ads allows Retrieve Embedded Sensitive Data. This issue affects Advanced Ads: from n/a through 2.0.26.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "4.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-10-02T10:17:09.010Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-10-02T10:17:09.010Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability, identified as an Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key, affects the Advanced Ads plugin by Monetizemore within the version range of n/a through 2.0.26.\nThe flaw stems from improper access control mechanisms that allow unauthenticated or unauthorized users to manipulate keys or parameters to gain access to sensitive, protected data embedded within the plugin's configuration or ad management system.\nThis vulnerability poses a significant risk to data confidentiality, as it enables unauthorized information disclosure.\nAn attacker can exploit this issue without requiring administrative privileges, facilitating the retrieval of potentially sensitive site-wide data through specifically crafted requests.\nThe exposure of such data may lead to further exploitation, information gathering for targeted attacks, or the compromise of advertising-related internal configurations.\nUsers of the Advanced Ads plugin are at risk of unauthorized data extraction if their instances remain within the vulnerable version range.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides in the core architectural handling of user-supplied input used to reference or retrieve internal data structures within the Advanced Ads plugin.\nThe root cause is an insecure implementation of authorization checks, where the application fails to adequately validate the association between a user-supplied key and the requested data resource.\nBecause the system trusts user-controlled keys to define the scope of data retrieval without performing a server-side authorization handshake, it creates an authorization bypass condition.\nThe attack flow begins when an attacker identifies the relevant endpoint or function responsible for querying ad settings or embedded content. By manipulating the input key—likely passed through a GET or POST parameter—the attacker bypasses standard access control logic.\nBy submitting a crafted key, the attacker forces the plugin to bypass the intended security constraints, causing the underlying system to return sensitive information that should be restricted to authenticated administrators.\nThis process does not inherently require a high level of privilege, making it highly dangerous for exposed web applications where such keys might be predictable or discoverable via side-channel analysis or reconnaissance.\nThe technical failure is essentially a breakdown of the principle of least privilege, where the application layer delegates authority to the client's request without a secondary verification against an Access Control List (ACL) or session-based entitlement.\nExploitation involves identifying the key generation logic or simply guessing keys that correlate to embedded sensitive data entities. Once a valid or bypassed key is provided, the application processes the request in a privileged context, outputting the requested sensitive data directly to the attacker's response buffer.\nThe post-exploitation impact includes the systematic retrieval of protected system information, potentially revealing API keys, tracking configurations, or internal ad placement metadata. This information acts as a force multiplier for subsequent attacks, potentially allowing for cross-site scripting (XSS) injection or other configuration-based attacks on the ad delivery framework.\nThe vulnerability is active by default on affected versions (n/a to 2.0.26) and requires no specific configuration change by the administrator to be present, making it a design-level flaw in the plugin's data retrieval workflow."
}