CVE-2025-13538
Published: 27 November 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-13538 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 40.0th 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-2025-13538 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the FindAll Listing plugin for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 1.0.5. The issue stems from the 'findall_listing_user_registration_additional_params' function, which fails to restrict the user roles that can be assigned during registration. Exploitation requires the FindAll Membership plugin to also be activated, as user registration functionality is provided by that plugin. The vulnerability is rated with 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) and is associated with CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management).
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability remotely with low complexity and no privileges required. By supplying the 'administrator' role parameter during the registration process, an attacker gains full administrator access to the WordPress site, enabling complete control over content, users, plugins, themes, and potentially the server itself through high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts.
Advisories from sources including Wordfence detail the vulnerability and note its dependency on the FindAll Membership plugin, with the plugin page available on ThemeForest. No specific patch details beyond version 1.0.5 are provided in the available information, but updating the FindAll Listing plugin is implied as the primary mitigation for affected versions.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-199802
Vulnerability details
The FindAll Listing plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.0.5. This is due to the 'findall_listing_user_registration_additional_params' 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. Note: The vulnerability can only be exploited if the FindAll Membership plugin is also activated, because user registration is in that plugin.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Unauthenticated remote exploitation of a public-facing WordPress plugin (T1190) enables privilege escalation to administrator via improper role assignment during registration (T1068).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Enforces the least privilege principle, preventing unauthenticated users from self-assigning administrator roles during registration.
Manages account creation and modification processes to restrict unauthorized role assignments, such as administrator during plugin-enabled user registration.
Validates user-supplied input parameters like roles in the 'findall_listing_user_registration_additional_params' function to reject unauthorized privilege escalations.