Overview
The Redirection for Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin is subject to a severe security vulnerability, identified under the code CVE-2025-8145. The weakness lies in its susceptibility to PHP Object Injection in versions up to, and including, 3.2.4. This vulnerability could potentially affect millions of websites running on the WordPress platform that utilize this plugin, posing a significant risk of system compromise and data leakage.
The importance of this vulnerability is underlined by its CVSS Severity Score of 8.8, which indicates a high level of severity. It opens the door for unauthenticated attackers to inject a PHP Object and, given the right conditions, even execute remote code.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-8145
Severity: High – 8.8 CVSS Score
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise and data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
Redirection for Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin | Up to and including 3.2.4
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability occurs in the get_lead_fields function of the Redirection for Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin, which is susceptible to PHP Object Injection. This happens due to the deserialization of untrusted inputs, allowing an attacker to inject a PHP Object. The presence of a POP chain in a Contact Form 7 plugin enables attackers to delete arbitrary files. Furthermore, under certain server configurations, Remote Code Execution is possible.
Conceptual Example Code
The following is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited. An attacker could send an HTTP POST request with a malicious payload to the vulnerable endpoint:
POST /contact-form-7/endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{
"form_data": "O:4:\"Lead\":2:{s:4:\"name\";s:5:\"Attacker\";s:4:\"file\";s:9:\"/etc/passwd\";}"
}In the example above, the attacker is injecting a serialized PHP Object in the form data. This object has a property ‘file’ that refers to the ‘/etc/passwd’ file. This would lead to the deletion of the mentioned file, leading to potential data loss or system instability.
Solutions and Mitigations
The vendor has issued a patch for this vulnerability, and it’s strongly recommended to apply this patch immediately. In case the patch cannot be applied immediately, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can be used as a temporary mitigation to detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability. However, these are not long-term solutions, and the patch should be applied as soon as possible to ensure system security.