Overview
The cybersecurity world is facing yet another critical vulnerability, this time in the form of a PHP Remote File Inclusion flaw in Dylan Kuhn’s Geo Mashup plugin. This vulnerability, indexed as CVE-2025-48293, affects all versions of the plugin up to and including 1.13.16. This is a significant issue due to the widespread use of Geo Mashup and the high severity of the vulnerability, which if exploited, could lead to system compromise or data leakage.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-48293
Severity: Critical (CVSS: 9.8)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: System compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
Dylan Kuhn Geo Mashup | Up to and including 1.13.16
How the Exploit Works
This vulnerability stems from the improper control of filename for Include/Require Statement in the PHP Program of the Geo Mashup plugin. An attacker can exploit this flaw by providing a specially crafted filename that causes the PHP interpreter to include a file from a remote server. The malicious file can be designed to execute arbitrary PHP code under the context of the target application, leading to a complete system compromise.
Conceptual Example Code
Here’s an example of how a potential attack might look, with the attacker sending a GET request to a vulnerable URL:
GET /wp-content/plugins/geo-mashup/load.php?geo_mashup_content=../../../../../malicious_file HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.comIn the above example, `malicious_file` would be a file hosted on a remote server and designed to execute arbitrary PHP code when included by the vulnerable application.
Mitigation and Remediation Guidance
Users are strongly advised to apply the vendor-supplied patch for this vulnerability as soon as possible. If immediate patching is not feasible, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can be used as a temporary mitigation measure to detect and prevent exploitation attempts. However, these measures should only be considered temporary as they do not address the underlying vulnerability.
In addition to these measures, it is always recommended to follow best practices for secure coding to prevent such vulnerabilities from being introduced in the first place. This includes proper handling and sanitization of user input, and avoiding the use of dangerous PHP functions like `include` or `require` with user-supplied data.