CVE-2025-23942
Published: 22 January 2025
Description
Adversaries may backdoor web servers with web shells to establish persistent access to systems.
Security Summary
CVE-2025-23942 is an Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type vulnerability (CWE-434) in the WP Load Gallery plugin (wp-load-gallery) developed by ngocuct0912 for WordPress. It enables attackers to upload a web shell to the web server. The vulnerability affects all versions of the plugin from n/a through 2.1.6 and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.1 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H).
Exploitation requires high privileges (PR:H), such as those held by an authenticated WordPress administrator, and can be performed over the network (AV:N) with low complexity (AC:L) and no user interaction (UI:N). Successful exploitation allows attackers to upload malicious files like web shells, resulting in high impacts across confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H) with a changed scope (S:C), potentially leading to full server compromise.
The Patchstack advisory at https://patchstack.com/database/Wordpress/Plugin/wp-load-gallery/vulnerability/wordpress-wp-load-gallery-plugin-2-1-6-arbitrary-file-upload-vulnerability?_s_id=cve provides details on this arbitrary file upload vulnerability in WP Load Gallery version 2.1.6.
Details
- CWE(s)
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability is an arbitrary file upload (CWE-434) that explicitly enables uploading and installing a web shell on the WordPress server.