Overview
CVE-2025-53495 is a critical vulnerability that lies in the heart of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Mediawiki – AbuseFilter Extension. This vulnerability paves the way for unauthorized access and data leakage, posing a significant threat to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of systems running the affected versions of the Mediawiki – AbuseFilter Extension. As the extension is widely utilised in the Wikimedia ecosystem, this vulnerability warrants immediate attention and prompt remediation.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-53495
Severity: Critical, CVSS Severity Score: 9.1
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Unauthorized access to systems and potential data leakage
Affected Products
Escape the Surveillance Era
Most apps won’t tell you the truth.
They’re part of the problem.
Phone numbers. Emails. Profiles. Logs.
It’s all fuel for surveillance.
Ameeba Chat gives you a way out.
- • No phone number
- • No email
- • No personal info
- • Anonymous aliases
- • End-to-end encrypted
Chat without a trace.
Product | Affected Versions
Mediawiki – AbuseFilter Extension | 1.43.X before 1.43.2
How the Exploit Works
The exploit takes advantage of a missing authorization vulnerability in the Mediawiki – AbuseFilter Extension. It allows an attacker to bypass the authorization mechanisms, granting them unauthorized access to the system. This could potentially be used to compromise the system or to extract sensitive information, leading to data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
While the specifics of the exploit are not disclosed to maintain security, here’s a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited using an HTTP request:
GET /mediawiki/AbuseFilterExtension/endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
{ "user_credentials": "None", "access_level": "admin" }In this example, an attacker sends a GET request to the vulnerable endpoint, specifying no user credentials but requesting admin-level access. Due to the missing authorization vulnerability, the system fails to properly validate the request, thereby granting the attacker unauthorized access.
Mitigation Guidance
To protect systems against this vulnerability, users are advised to apply the official patch provided by the vendor. This patch upgrades the Mediawiki – AbuseFilter Extension to version 1.43.2, which has remedied the missing authorization vulnerability. As a temporary mitigation measure, users can also implement a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to monitor and block suspicious activity. However, users are strongly encouraged to apply the vendor patch as soon as possible to ensure maximum protection.