Overview
In today’s post, we delve into a critical vulnerability discovered in a widely-used WordPress plugin, the Catalog Importer, Scraper & Crawler. The vulnerability, designated as CVE-2025-8417, opens up the potential for unauthenticated PHP code injection, posing a significant threat to any WordPress instances using the affected plugin. Given the prevalence of WordPress as a content management system, the implications of this vulnerability are far-reaching and warrant immediate attention.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-8417
Severity: High (CVSS: 8.1)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
Catalog Importer, Scraper & Crawler Plugin for WordPress | All versions up to and including 5.1.4
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability stems from two key issues in the WordPress plugin. Firstly, the plugin uses a guessable numeric token for authentication, which could be brute-forced or guessed by attackers. Secondly, the plugin makes use of an unsafe eval() function which executes user-supplied input as PHP code.
An attacker could craft a malicious request with the correct numeric key and PHP code as user-supplied input. If the request is processed by the server, the eval() function will execute the attacker’s arbitrary PHP code, potentially leading to complete system compromise or data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
Here is a conceptual example of how an HTTP request exploiting this vulnerability might look:
GET /wp-content/plugins/cat-importer-scraper-crawler/endpoint.php?key=900001705&payload=phpinfo() HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.comIn this example, the attacker sends a GET request to the vulnerable endpoint with the guessed ‘key’ parameter and a ‘payload’ parameter containing arbitrary PHP code (in this case, a call to the phpinfo() function). If the request is successful, the server will execute the PHP code, potentially revealing sensitive information.
Mitigation and Recommendations
The simplest and most effective way to mitigate this vulnerability is to apply the vendor-supplied patch. If for any reason you can’t apply the patch immediately, using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can provide temporary protection by blocking attempts to exploit the vulnerability.
In the longer term, consider a security review of your WordPress plugins to identify and address similar vulnerabilities, and ensure that your security systems are configured to detect and block such attacks. Regular patching and updates are also key to maintaining a secure WordPress installation.
