CVE-2025-12356: 
WordPress vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-12356 is a missing authorization vulnerability in the Tickera – Sell Tickets & Manage Events plugin for WordPress. It affects all versions up to and including 3.5.6.4, allowing authenticated attackers with Subscriber-level access or above to perform unauthorized modification of data. The vulnerability was published on February 18, 2026, and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 4.3 (Medium) (Red Hat CVE).

The root cause is a missing capability check (CWE-862: Missing Authorization) on the wp_ajax_change_ticket_status AJAX endpoint within the Tickera plugin. Any authenticated WordPress user with at least Subscriber-level privileges can send a crafted AJAX request to this endpoint to arbitrarily update post or event statuses without proper authorization validation. No special configuration or user interaction is required beyond having a valid low-privilege account on the target WordPress site (Red Hat CVE).

Successful exploitation allows authenticated low-privilege users to modify the status of posts or events managed by the Tickera plugin, potentially disrupting event management workflows, unpublishing events, or altering ticket availability. The impact is limited to integrity — there is no confidentiality or availability impact — and the scope is confined to the affected WordPress installation. Lateral movement potential is low, but abuse could cause operational disruption for organizations relying on Tickera for event ticketing (Red Hat CVE).

No public proof-of-concept exploit code or evidence of in-the-wild exploitation has been reported for CVE-2025-12356. The EPSS score is approximately 0.025% (0.000250), indicating a very low probability of exploitation in the near term. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, and no threat actor attribution has been identified (Red Hat CVE).

1. Reconnaissance: Identify WordPress sites running the Tickera plugin version 3.5.6.4 or earlier, using tools like WPScan or by inspecting plugin metadata in publicly accessible WordPress installations.
2. Obtain low-privilege account: Register or obtain credentials for a Subscriber-level (or higher) WordPress account on the target site.
3. Craft AJAX request: Construct an HTTP POST request targeting the WordPress AJAX endpoint (/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php) with the action parameter set to change_ticket_status and the desired post/event ID and target status.
4. Submit request: Send the crafted request with valid authentication cookies or nonce (if any is present but not properly validated), bypassing the missing capability check.
5. Achieve unauthorized modification: The server processes the request without verifying the user's authorization, updating the targeted post or event status as specified by the attacker (Red Hat CVE).

• Logs: WordPress access logs showing POST requests to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action=change_ticket_status from low-privilege user accounts or unexpected IP addresses.
• Application Logs: Unexpected changes to event or post statuses in the WordPress database, particularly from accounts that should not have administrative privileges.
• Network: Repeated or automated AJAX requests to the admin-ajax.php endpoint from a single IP or user agent in a short time window.

Users should update the Tickera – Sell Tickets & Manage Events plugin to a version beyond 3.5.6.4 that includes a proper capability check on the wp_ajax_change_ticket_status endpoint. As a temporary workaround, site administrators can restrict Subscriber-level user registration or disable the plugin until a patched version is available. Monitoring WordPress AJAX logs for unexpected change_ticket_status actions from low-privilege accounts is also advisable (Red Hat CVE).