CVE-2025-2563: Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in User Registration & Membership WordPress Plugin

Overview

CVE-2025-2563 is a critical vulnerability that affects the User Registration & Membership WordPress plugin. If exploited, it can lead to a privilege escalation issue, allowing unauthenticated users to gain admin privileges. This makes it a grave security concern for website administrators and owners who employ this plugin for their WordPress sites. The vulnerability directly endangers the integrity of affected systems, with potential system compromise or data leakage being the major risks involved.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-2563
Severity: High (8.1)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage, privilege escalation

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

User Registration & Membership WordPress Plugin | Before 4.1.2

How the Exploit Works

CVE-2025-2563 is a privilege escalation vulnerability that occurs due to inadequate access control in the User Registration & Membership WordPress plugin. Specifically, the plugin does not prevent users from setting their account role when the Membership Addon is enabled. This flaw can be exploited by unauthenticated users who can manipulate the account creation process to assign themselves admin privileges, thereby gaining unauthorized access to the system or data.

Conceptual Example Code

Here is a conceptual example of how an HTTP request exploiting the vulnerability might look:

POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=ur_ajax_register HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
user_login=victim&user_email=victim@example.com&user_pass=password&role=administrator

This example demonstrates an attempt to register a new user with ‘administrator’ privileges. Note that the specific payload and endpoint will depend on the actual configuration and version of the WordPress site and plugin.

Mitigations

To mitigate this vulnerability, users are advised to update the User Registration & Membership WordPress plugin to version 4.1.2 or later. As a temporary mitigation strategy, users may also employ a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability.