Cyber Posture

CVE-2025-23853

High

Published: 14 February 2025

Published
14 February 2025
Modified
23 April 2026
KEV Added
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Patch
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CVSS Score 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L
EPSS Score 0.0019 40.2th percentile
Risk Priority 14 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Description

Adversaries may send spearphishing emails with a malicious link in an attempt to gain access to victim systems.

Security Summary

CVE-2025-23853 is an Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation vulnerability, classified as Reflected Cross-site Scripting (XSS) under CWE-79, in the NoFollow Free WordPress plugin by michelem. The issue affects all versions of NoFollow Free up to and including 1.6.3.

The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.1 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L), indicating it is exploitable over the network with low attack complexity, no required privileges, but necessitating user interaction. Remote attackers can leverage reflected XSS to execute arbitrary scripts in a victim's browser context upon successful trickery, such as via malicious links, achieving low impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability with a changed scope.

Mitigation guidance is available in the Patchstack advisory at https://patchstack.com/database/Wordpress/Plugin/nofollow-free/vulnerability/wordpress-nofollow-free-plugin-1-6-3-reflected-cross-site-scripting-xss-vulnerability?_s_id=cve.

Details

CWE(s)
CWE-79

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
attack.mitre.org →
T1059.007 JavaScript Execution
Adversaries may abuse various implementations of JavaScript for execution.
attack.mitre.org →
T1204.001 Malicious Link Execution
An adversary may rely upon a user clicking a malicious link in order to gain execution.
attack.mitre.org →
T1566.002 Spearphishing Link Initial Access
Adversaries may send spearphishing emails with a malicious link in an attempt to gain access to victim systems.
attack.mitre.org →
Why these techniques?

Reflected XSS in public-facing WordPress plugin directly enables exploitation via malicious links for arbitrary JavaScript execution in browser context.

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

References