CVE-2025-11533
Published: 11 October 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-11533 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management (CWE-269) vulnerability in Themeforest (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 41.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-2 (Account Management) and AC-6 (Least Privilege).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-11533 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the WP Freeio plugin for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 1.2.21. The flaw arises in the process_register() function, which does not restrict the user roles that can be specified during registration. This allows attackers to self-assign the 'administrator' role upon creating an account.
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability over the network with low attack complexity and no user interaction or privileges required, earning it a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). By supplying the 'administrator' role during the registration process, they gain full administrative access to the site, enabling high-impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability violations. The issue maps to CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management).
Advisories providing further details, including potential mitigation steps, are available from Wordfence at https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/0db85f84-04e9-42eb-a16b-96554fbfd186?source=cve and the plugin's ThemeForest page at https://themeforest.net/item/freeio-freelance-marketplace-wordpress-theme/42045416. The CVE was published on 2025-10-11T08:15:32.157.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-33819
Vulnerability details
The WP Freeio plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.2.21. This is due to the process_register() function not restricting what user roles a user can register with. This makes it possible…
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for unauthenticated attackers to supply the 'administrator' role during registration and gain administrator access to the site.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability enables unauthenticated remote exploitation of a public-facing WordPress plugin (T1190) to register an administrator account, achieving privilege escalation (T1068).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
AC-6 enforces least privilege by ensuring users are assigned only necessary privileges, directly preventing self-assignment of administrator roles during registration.
AC-2 requires proper account management processes, including privilege assignment during creation, to block unauthorized escalation via the registration function.
SI-10 mandates validation of inputs like user roles in the process_register() function, rejecting unauthorized administrator role specifications.