CVE-2024-37272: Travel Monster CSRF Vulnerability

CVE-2024-37272 Overview

CVE-2024-37272 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability [CWE-352] in the wptravelengine Travel Monster WordPress theme. The flaw affects all versions of Travel Monster up to and including 1.1.2. An attacker can craft a malicious request that, when triggered by an authenticated user visiting an attacker-controlled page, performs unauthorized actions in the target's WordPress session.

Critical Impact
Successful exploitation allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to induce authenticated users into performing state-changing actions through crafted requests, resulting in limited integrity impact within the WordPress site.

Affected Products

wptravelengine Travel Monster WordPress theme
Versions from n/a through 1.1.2
WordPress installations using the vulnerable theme

Discovery Timeline

2025-01-02 - CVE-2024-37272 published to NVD
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2024-37272

Vulnerability Analysis

The Travel Monster theme fails to validate the origin and authenticity of state-changing HTTP requests. WordPress provides nonce-based CSRF protection through the wp_nonce_field() and check_admin_referer() functions, but the affected theme does not apply these controls consistently on sensitive endpoints. Attackers exploit this gap by hosting a malicious page that submits forged requests to the target WordPress site.

Exploitation requires user interaction, since the victim must visit or interact with the attacker-controlled resource while authenticated to the WordPress site. The scope of impact is limited to integrity, with no direct confidentiality or availability consequences per the CVSS vector.

Root Cause

The root cause is missing or improperly implemented anti-CSRF token validation on privileged actions exposed by the Travel Monster theme. Without verifying a per-request nonce tied to the user session, the theme accepts any request bearing valid session cookies as legitimate. This design flaw falls under CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery.

Attack Vector

An attacker crafts an HTML page containing a hidden form or JavaScript that auto-submits a request to a vulnerable endpoint in the Travel Monster theme. When an authenticated WordPress administrator or privileged user visits this page, the browser attaches the session cookie and submits the request. The vulnerable handler processes the action without verifying it originated from the WordPress admin interface.

For complete technical details, see the Patchstack advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2024-37272

Indicators of Compromise

HTTP POST or GET requests to Travel Monster theme endpoints with Referer headers pointing to external, unrelated domains
Unexpected configuration changes or content modifications in the WordPress site that correlate with administrator browsing activity
Web server access logs showing state-changing requests missing the _wpnonce parameter

Detection Strategies

Enable WordPress audit logging to track administrative actions and correlate them with user session activity
Monitor web application firewall (WAF) logs for requests to theme endpoints originating from cross-origin referrers
Compare timestamps of configuration changes against administrator browsing sessions to identify inconsistencies

Monitoring Recommendations

Deploy a WordPress security plugin that logs privileged actions and flags requests missing valid nonces
Alert on outbound HTTP requests from administrator workstations to unknown domains immediately preceding site configuration changes
Review the site's active theme version regularly to ensure Travel Monster is patched or removed

How to Mitigate CVE-2024-37272

Immediate Actions Required

Identify all WordPress sites running the Travel Monster theme at version 1.1.2 or earlier
Restrict administrator access to trusted networks and require browser isolation for privileged accounts
Instruct administrators to log out of WordPress before browsing unrelated websites

Patch Information

At the time of publication, no vendor-supplied patched version is referenced in the available advisory data. Consult the Patchstack vulnerability database for the latest fix status and update Travel Monster to the vendor-supplied patched release when available.

Workarounds

Replace Travel Monster with an alternative maintained WordPress theme until a fixed version is released
Deploy a WAF rule that blocks state-changing requests to Travel Monster endpoints when the Referer or Origin header does not match the site's own domain
Enforce two-factor authentication and short session lifetimes for WordPress administrators to reduce the window for CSRF exploitation

bash

# Example WAF rule concept (ModSecurity) to block cross-origin state-changing requests
SecRule REQUEST_METHOD "@streq POST" \
  "chain,id:1002024,phase:1,deny,status:403,msg:'CSRF: cross-origin POST to WordPress'"
SecRule &REQUEST_HEADERS:Origin "@eq 1" \
  "chain"
SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Origin "!@beginsWith https://your-site.example" "t:none"