Overview
The CVE-2025-5482 vulnerability is a serious privilege escalation flaw found in the Sunshine Photo Cart: Free Client Photo Galleries for Photographers plugin for WordPress. This vulnerability affects all versions of the plugin up to, and including, 3.4.11. The vulnerability arises from the plugin’s failure to properly validate a user-supplied key, enabling an attacker to gain unauthorized access to a user’s account.
This vulnerability matters because it potentially impacts a large number of WordPress websites that utilize the Sunshine Photo Cart plugin. If successfully exploited, an attacker could gain administrative access to a website, leading to potential system compromise or data leakage.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-5482
Severity: High (CVSS: 8.8)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: Low (Subscriber-level access and above)
User Interaction: Required
Impact: System compromise and potential data leakage
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Product | Affected Versions
Sunshine Photo Cart Plugin for WordPress | Up to and including 3.4.11
How the Exploit Works
The exploit takes advantage of the plugin’s inadequate user-supplied key validation. An attacker, with at least Subscriber-level access, can manipulate the password reset functionality to change arbitrary user’s passwords, including administrators. This allows the attacker to reset the user’s password and gain unauthorized access to their account.
Conceptual Example Code
Consider the following conceptual HTTP request:
POST /wp-json/sunshine/v1/reset-password HTTP/1.1
Host: victimwebsite.com
Content-Type: application/json
{
"user_id": "1",
"new_password": "malicious_password"
}In this example, an attacker sends a POST request to the ‘reset-password’ endpoint with a JSON payload containing the user_id of the target (in this case, the administrator with user_id “1”) and a new_password to replace the existing one. The server, failing to properly validate the request, processes the request and resets the user’s password, granting the attacker access to the account.
Mitigation Guidance
Users affected by this vulnerability are advised to apply the vendor patch that has been released to address this issue. If a patch cannot be promptly applied, consider using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as temporary mitigation. Regularly update and patch all systems and plugins to avoid similar vulnerabilities in the future.