Overview
The CVE-2025-5117 vulnerability exposes a fundamental flaw in the security mechanism of WordPress’s Property plugin. It specifically targets versions 1.0.5 to 1.0.6 of the plugin, enabling malicious actors with Author-level access to escalate their privileges to those of an administrator. This vulnerability has the potential to be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data or to compromise the system, making it a significant threat to the security of WordPress sites that use the vulnerable versions of the Property plugin.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-5117
Severity: High – 8.8 (CVSS Score)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: Low (Author-level access)
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
WordPress Property Plugin | 1.0.5 to 1.0.6
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability resides in the lack of a capability check on the use of the property_package_user_role metadata. This oversight allows authenticated attackers with Author-level access to elevate their privileges to that of an administrator by creating a package post and setting the property_package_user_role to administrator. After doing this, they simply have to submit the PayPal registration form to finalize the privilege escalation.
Conceptual Example Code
Here’s a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited:
POST /wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=property_package HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-wp-site.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Cookie: wordpress_logged_in=[user_session_cookie]
post_title=MaliciousPackage&property_package_user_role=administrator&_wpnonce=[valid_wpnonce]This HTTP request creates a new package post with the user role set to “administrator”. The attacker would then submit the PayPal registration form to escalate their privileges to an administrator level.
Mitigation Guidance
To mitigate the effects of this vulnerability, users are advised to apply the vendor patch for the WordPress Property plugin as soon as possible. In the meantime, the use of a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can provide temporary protection against potential exploits.