Overview
The cybersecurity world is facing a major challenge with the discovery of a new vulnerability, CVE-2025-39358. This vulnerability is a deserialization of untrusted data threat that affects Teastudio.Pl’s WP Posts Carousel. This WordPress plugin, widely used for creating beautiful posts carousels and sliders, has now become a potential door for cybercriminals to compromise systems or leak sensitive data. The severity of this vulnerability is compounded by the widespread use of the affected plugin, placing numerous websites and their associated data at risk.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-39358
Severity: High, CVSS score 8.8
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise and data leakage
Affected Products
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They’re part of the problem.
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- • No email
- • No personal info
- • Anonymous aliases
- • End-to-end encrypted
Chat without a trace.
Product | Affected Versions
Teastudio.Pl WP Posts Carousel | n/a through 1.3.12
How the Exploit Works
The exploit works by taking advantage of the insecure deserialization process within the WP Posts Carousel. The attacker submits malicious serialized data to the system, which is then deserialized by the plugin. This data often contains code that, when executed, can lead to various types of attacks. In this particular case, it allows an attacker to perform an Object Injection. This type of attack can lead to arbitrary PHP code execution, potentially compromising the system or leading to data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
Below is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited. This is a sample HTTP request which incorporates a malicious payload within the serialized data.
POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=wp_ajax_nopriv_teastudio_posts_carousel HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{ "serializedData": "O:8:\"stdClass\":1:{s:5:\"inject\";s:42:\"system('rm -rf /');\";}" }In the above example, the serialized data represents an object with a property “inject” that holds a system command (`rm -rf /`) as its value. If the target system is vulnerable and does not properly sanitize or validate the input, this command could be executed on the server, leading to a catastrophic loss of data.
How to Mitigate
The best way to mitigate this vulnerability is to apply the vendor-supplied patch. If the patch is not available, using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as a temporary mitigation measure. These systems can be configured to recognize and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability. However, this should be considered a temporary solution, and the systems should be patched as soon as the vendor provides the fix.