Overview
The cybersecurity landscape is continually evolving with new vulnerabilities being discovered every day. One such vulnerability, denoted as CVE-2025-3811, has been found to affect the WPBookit plugin for WordPress. This plugin, widely used for its user-friendly features, is unfortunately susceptible to a critical privilege escalation vulnerability, potentially leading to account takeover. It is important to address this vulnerability promptly, as it opens doors for unauthenticated attackers to gain unauthorized access to various user accounts, including those of administrators, thereby compromising system security and leading to potential data leakage.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-3811
Severity: Critical (CVSS: 9.8)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Account takeover, potential system compromise, and data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
WPBookit Plugin for WordPress | Up to and including 1.0.2
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability resides in the edit_newdata_customer_callback() function of the WPBookit plugin. This function is responsible for updating user details, including email addresses. However, due to improper validation of user identity before updating these details, an unauthenticated attacker can exploit this function to change the email address of arbitrary users, including administrators. Once the email address is changed, the attacker can leverage this to reset the user’s password and subsequently gain access to the user’s account.
Conceptual Example Code
The following conceptual example demonstrates how an attacker may use a malicious HTTP request to exploit this vulnerability:
POST /wpbookit/update HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{
"user_id": "admin",
"new_email": "attacker@example.com"
}In this example, the attacker sends a POST request to the vulnerable endpoint, attempting to change the email address of the ‘admin’ user to ‘attacker@example.com’. If the system is vulnerable, this request would be successful, and the attacker could then initiate a password reset for the ‘admin’ account, gaining unauthorized access.
Recommendations for Mitigation
Users are strongly urged to apply the vendor patch to fix this vulnerability. If the patch cannot be applied immediately, using Web Application Firewalls (WAF) or Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) can serve as temporary mitigation measures. It is crucial to keep all systems and plugins updated to the latest versions to prevent potential exploits.