Overview
CVE-2025-5304 is a high-severity vulnerability found in the PT Project Notebooks plugin for WordPress. This vulnerability is of particular concern due to its potential to allow unauthenticated attackers to elevate their privileges to that of an administrator. As WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world, this vulnerability could potentially affect millions of websites worldwide, leading to system compromise or data leakage.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-5304
Severity: Critical (9.8 CVSS)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Privilege escalation leading to potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
PT Project Notebooks Plugin for WordPress | 1.0.0 – 1.1.3
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability exists due to missing authorization in the wpnb_pto_new_users_add() function of the PT Project Notebooks plugin for WordPress. This function, which is meant to add new users, does not properly check the user’s privileges before performing its task. Because of this, an unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted request to this function, thereby gaining administrator privileges.
Conceptual Example Code
Here’s a simplified example of how the vulnerability might be exploited:
POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=wpnb_pto_new_users_add HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-website.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
user_login=attacker&user_pass=password&role=administratorIn this example, an attacker sends a POST request to the wpnb_pto_new_users_add function, which is accessible via the admin-ajax.php endpoint. The request specifies the new user’s login name (attacker), password, and role (administrator). Because the function does not properly check the user’s privileges before performing its task, the attacker is able to create a new administrator account.
Mitigation
Users are advised to apply the vendor patch as soon as possible. In the meantime, they can use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for temporary mitigation. These systems can be configured to block or alert on suspicious requests to the wpnb_pto_new_users_add function, thus preventing the vulnerability from being exploited.