Overview
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system has highlighted a significant security vulnerability in the Hydra Booking plugin for WordPress. Designated as CVE-2025-7689, this vulnerability poses a real threat to WordPress sites that utilize this popular booking plugin. The vulnerability allows cyber attackers with minimal privileges, specifically Subscriber-level access and above, to escalate their privileges to that of an Administrator user by exploiting a missing capability check in a specific function, an action that can lead to system compromise or data leakage.
Due to the wide use of WordPress as a platform and the Hydra Booking plugin for various online booking purposes, the potential impact of this vulnerability is far-reaching. The severity of this vulnerability is underscored by its CVSS Severity Score of 8.8, signaling a critical security flaw.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-7689
Severity: Critical, CVSS score 8.8
Attack Vector: Web-based, via the Hydra Booking plugin
Privileges Required: Subscriber-level access
User Interaction: User interaction is required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
Hydra Booking Plugin for WordPress | 1.1.0 to 1.1.18
How the Exploit Works
CVE-2025-7689 exploits a missing capability check in the tfhb_reset_password_callback() function of the Hydra Booking plugin. This function, in normal operation, is used for resetting passwords. However, due to the missing capability check, it fails to verify the level of access of the user invoking it. An attacker with Subscriber-level access can call this function to reset the password of an Administrator user, thereby escalating their privileges to that of an Administrator.
Conceptual Example Code
The following is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited:
POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php HTTP/1.1
Host: targetsite.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
action=tfhb_reset_password&user_login=admin&new_password=malicious_passwordIn this example, the attacker sends a POST request to the admin-ajax.php endpoint, which handles Ajax requests in WordPress. The action parameter is set to tfhb_reset_password to invoke the vulnerable function, the user_login parameter is set to the username of an Administrator, and the new_password parameter is set to the attacker’s chosen password.
After this request is successfully executed, the attacker can log in as the Administrator user with the new password.