CVE-2024-50463: Sunshine Photo Cart Open Redirect Flaw

CVE-2024-50463 Overview

CVE-2024-50463 is an open redirect vulnerability affecting the Sunshine Photo Cart plugin for WordPress. The flaw exists in all versions up to and including 3.2.9. An attacker can craft a URL that uses the plugin's redirect handling to send victims to an attacker-controlled site. The issue is tracked under CWE-601: URL Redirection to Untrusted Site.

Exploitation requires user interaction, typically a victim clicking a malicious link. The vulnerability is commonly abused in phishing campaigns because the initial domain belongs to a trusted WordPress site running the plugin.

Critical Impact
Attackers can leverage trusted WordPress domains running Sunshine Photo Cart to redirect visitors to phishing or malware-hosting sites, undermining user trust and bypassing URL reputation filters.

Affected Products

Sunshine Photo Cart plugin for WordPress, versions up to and including 3.2.9
WordPress sites with the sunshine-photo-cart plugin installed and active
Sites that expose plugin redirect endpoints to unauthenticated users

Discovery Timeline

2024-10-28 - CVE-2024-50463 published to the National Vulnerability Database
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2024-50463

Vulnerability Analysis

The Sunshine Photo Cart plugin accepts a user-controlled URL parameter and performs a redirect without validating that the destination belongs to an allowed host. Because the plugin does not restrict the redirect target to the site's own origin or an allowlist, any attacker-supplied URL is treated as valid.

Open redirects are frequently chained with other attacks. Phishing operators abuse them to disguise malicious links behind a legitimate domain. The flaw can also assist OAuth token theft and bypass of weak referer-based protections on downstream services.

Root Cause

The root cause is missing or incomplete validation of a redirect target parameter inside the plugin. The affected code path reads an untrusted value from the HTTP request and passes it to a redirect function without comparing the host against the site's own domain or an allowlist of trusted destinations.

Attack Vector

The attack vector is network-based and requires user interaction. An attacker sends a crafted link, such as one embedded in an email, social media post, or malicious advertisement, that points to the vulnerable WordPress site. When the victim clicks the link, the plugin issues an HTTP redirect to the attacker-controlled destination. Full technical details are available in the Patchstack advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2024-50463

Indicators of Compromise

Web server access logs containing requests to Sunshine Photo Cart endpoints with external URLs in query parameters such as redirect, url, or return
HTTP 302 or 301 responses from the WordPress site pointing to domains outside the site's own origin
Unexpected referrer traffic from the WordPress site to unknown third-party domains in analytics data

Detection Strategies

Review web server and WordPress access logs for plugin requests containing fully qualified URLs or encoded URLs in parameter values
Deploy a web application firewall rule to flag redirect parameters with hosts that do not match the site domain
Monitor outbound redirects reported by browser telemetry or email security gateways that touch the affected WordPress sites

Monitoring Recommendations

Enable verbose logging on the WordPress site and forward access logs to a central analytics or SIEM platform for correlation
Alert on unusual spikes in requests to plugin endpoints associated with redirects, especially from external referrers
Track reputation feeds and user-reported phishing incidents that reference the organization's WordPress domains

How to Mitigate CVE-2024-50463

Immediate Actions Required

Update the Sunshine Photo Cart plugin to a version later than 3.2.9 as soon as a patched release is available from the vendor
Audit WordPress sites to inventory where sunshine-photo-cart is installed and prioritize public-facing instances
Educate site users and customers about phishing links that may use the affected domain as an intermediary

Patch Information

Refer to the Patchstack vulnerability report for the latest patch status. Apply the fixed version published by the plugin maintainer through the WordPress plugin repository. Verify that the installed version is above 3.2.9 after update.

Workarounds

Deploy a web application firewall rule that blocks or sanitizes redirect parameters pointing to external hosts
Disable or remove the Sunshine Photo Cart plugin on sites where it is not actively used until a patched version is applied
Restrict access to plugin endpoints with authentication or IP allowlisting where feasible

bash

# Example ModSecurity rule to block external redirect parameters targeting the plugin
SecRule REQUEST_URI "@contains /sunshine-photo-cart/" \
    "chain,id:1005001,phase:2,deny,status:403,log,msg:'Blocked potential open redirect (CVE-2024-50463)'"
    SecRule ARGS:redirect|ARGS:url|ARGS:return "@rx ^https?://(?!yoursite\.com)" "t:lowercase"