Overview
This blog post aims to shed light on a significant security vulnerability tagged as CVE-2025-9693, which affects the User Meta – User Profile Builder and User management plugin for WordPress. The vulnerability could potentially allow an attacker with Subscriber-level access to delete arbitrary files on the server. This vulnerability is crucial as it can lead to remote code execution if a critical file (e.g., wp-config.php) is deleted. The potential system compromise or data leakage due to this vulnerability underscores its severity.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-9693
Severity: High (CVSS: 8.0)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: Low (Subscriber-level access)
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
User Meta – User Profile Builder and User management plugin | Up to and including 3.1.2
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability stems from insufficient file path validation in the postInsertUserProcess function of the User Meta – User Profile Builder and User management plugin for WordPress. An attacker with Subscriber-level access can exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted request to the server that manipulates file paths to point to arbitrary files on the server. This allows the attacker to delete any file of their choosing, with potential targets being critical system files whose deletion could lead to remote code execution.
Conceptual Example Code
Here’s a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited. This is a simplified example and does not represent actual code:
POST /user_meta/user_profile_builder/delete_file HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{ "filepath": "/absolute/path/to/wp-config.php" }In this example, the attacker is sending a POST request to the delete_file endpoint of the User Meta – User Profile Builder plugin with a JSON payload specifying the absolute path to the wp-config.php file. If the endpoint is vulnerable and does not validate the filepath correctly, it may process this request and delete the specified file, leading to possible remote code execution.
Mitigation
Users of the affected plugin are strongly encouraged to apply the vendor-supplied patch as soon as possible. If a patch cannot be applied immediately, users should consider leveraging a web application firewall (WAF) or an intrusion detection system (IDS) as a temporary mitigation measure. These systems can be configured to block or alert on suspicious requests that target the vulnerable endpoint.
