Attack Vectors

CVE-2024-49699 affects the ARPrice – WordPress Pricing Table Plugin (slug: arprice) in versions up to and including 4.1.3. It is rated High severity (CVSS 8.8; vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), meaning it can be reached over the internet with low attack complexity and without needing user interaction.

The key exposure is that the attacker must be authenticated with Subscriber-level access or higher. In practical business terms, this includes scenarios such as:

1) a legitimate user account being abused (e.g., a customer account on a membership site), 2) a low-privilege account compromised through password reuse or phishing, or 3) an attacker successfully registering an account if self-registration is enabled.

Security Weakness

The vulnerability is a PHP Object Injection issue caused by deserialization of untrusted input in ARPrice versions ≤ 4.1.3. Deserialization vulnerabilities are dangerous because they can allow attackers to manipulate how the application handles objects internally.

According to the published advisory, no known POP chain is present in the vulnerable software. However, the risk remains significant because a usable “chain” can be introduced by other plugins or themes installed on the same WordPress site. In other words, ARPrice can become the entry point, while another component provides the pieces needed to escalate the impact.

Remediation: Update ARPrice to version 4.2 or a newer patched release, as recommended by the vendor/advisory source.

Technical or Business Impacts

If an attacker can successfully leverage this issue (especially in an environment where an additional plugin/theme enables a POP chain), the outcomes can be severe: arbitrary file deletion, retrieval of sensitive data, and potentially remote code execution. These map directly to business risks such as site downtime, defacement, loss of customer trust, and incident response costs.

For marketing and revenue teams, the biggest practical risks include disruption to lead capture and conversion paths (pricing pages often sit close to purchase decisions), forced campaign pauses, and reputational damage if customer or prospect data is exposed. For compliance and finance leadership, the potential for sensitive data access raises regulatory exposure, reporting obligations, contractual penalties, and unplanned spend on forensics and remediation.

Because this vulnerability requires only low-privilege access, organizations should treat it as a priority: low-level accounts are often more numerous, less monitored, and more likely to be compromised than administrator accounts.

Similar Attacks

Deserialization and object-injection style weaknesses have contributed to major real-world incidents where attackers chained multiple weaknesses together to reach high impact. Notable examples include:

Equifax breach (2017) overview and impact
CISA advisory on “Follina” (MSDT) exploitation (2022)
CISA advisory on Exchange Server exploitation (2021)

Reference: CVE-2024-49699 record and Wordfence advisory.