CVE-2025-32974: Critical Vulnerability in XWiki’s Rights Analysis Leading to Potential System Compromise

Overview

This blog post will delve into a critical vulnerability, designated as CVE-2025-32974, which affects the XWiki platform, a popular generic wiki software used by many organizations for collaboration and content management. This issue is of paramount importance because of its potential to compromise the entire system or lead to substantial data leakage, impacting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the XWiki installation.
The severity and potential impact of this vulnerability necessitate immediate attention and action from all organizations utilizing affected versions of XWiki, highlighting the importance of regular patch management and security updates within an organization’s cybersecurity strategy.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-32974
Severity: Critical (9.0 CVSS Score)
Attack Vector: Application-based
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

XWiki | 15.9-rc-1 to before 15.10.8
XWiki | 16.0.0-rc-1 to before 16.2.0

How the Exploit Works

The vulnerability lies in the rights analysis component of XWiki, which fails to properly consider TextAreas with default content types. When a user with script, admin, or programming rights edits a page, it triggers a warning if there is content such as a script macro that would gain more rights due to the editing. However, this analysis overlooks certain property types, providing an opportunity for an attacker to inject malicious scripts.
Once these scripts are executed, they can potentially compromise the entire XWiki installation, leading to unauthorized access, alteration of data, or even a complete system shutdown. This makes the vulnerability a severe threat, especially in environments where XWiki is used to manage sensitive data and processes.

Conceptual Example Code

The following is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited:

POST /xwiki/editpage HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
content="<textarea type='hidden'>" + "{"malicious_script": "..." + "</textarea>"

In this example, a malicious script is injected into a hidden TextArea of the page being edited, bypassing XWiki’s rights analysis and potentially being executed when a user with higher privileges edits the page.

Recommendation

The vendor has released patches for this vulnerability in versions 15.10.8 and 16.2.0 of XWiki. All users of affected versions are strongly encouraged to apply these updates immediately. If immediate patching is not possible, using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can offer temporary mitigation. However, these are not long-term solutions and should not replace patching the vulnerability.
Stay vigilant, stay secure.