CVE-2025-2563 Scanner

The User Registration & Membership plugin for WordPress is a popular tool used by website administrators to manage user registrations and memberships. The plugin allows for easy configuration and integration into WordPress sites, offering features like custom registration forms and membership management. Its ease of use and flexibility make it a preferred choice for bloggers, businesses, and organizations wanting to manage user access on their sites. This plugin provides robust solutions for those needing custom user roles or membership subscriptions. Managed and maintained efficiently, it aims at enhancing a site's interactivity and user engagement. Given its importance in website management, ensuring the security of this plugin is crucial.

The vulnerability in this plugin arises from an improper validation process in the 'prepare_members_data' function, allowing privilege escalation. Exploiting this flaw, an attacker can bypass restrictions and create an administrative user account. This means attackers can gain unauthorized administrative privileges without proper authentication. The vulnerability affects versions of the plugin up to 4.1.1, compromising the security of WordPress sites using it. Immediate attention to patching this flaw is recommended to prevent unauthorized access. Administrators using this plugin should be cautious about these potential security flaws.

The technical details of this vulnerability revolve around inadequate security validation in the plugin's backend operations. Specifically, the potential attacker can exploit insufficient checks in the user registration process to escalate privileges. This involves manipulating the 'register' functions improperly configured to restrict unauthorized user roles. Exploitation involves sending carefully crafted HTTP requests that bypass security checks, resulting in unauthorized account creation with privileged roles. The vulnerable parameters and endpoints exploited are part of ajax calls that handle user form submissions. Being able to execute this in a network environment with anonymous access increases the severity of this vulnerability.

If exploited, this vulnerability could severely impact a WordPress site's integrity and security. Attackers would obtain complete control over the site, allowing the installation of malicious code or data interception. The impact ranges from data theft, content manipulation, to potentially defacing the site. Such unauthorized access could extend to backdoor installations, enabling ongoing compromises. The overall trust and reputation of the site can suffer, impacting visitor safety and engagement levels. Preventive measures should be executed immediately to secure user and site data against potential threats.

REFERENCES

• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/wordpress-plugins/user-registration/user-registration-membership-411-unauthenticated-privilege-escalation
• https://patchstack.com/database/wordpress/plugin/user-registration/vulnerability/wordpress-user-registration-membership-plugin-4-1-2-unauthenticated-privilege-escalation-vulnerability
• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-2563