CVE-2025-13613
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2025-13613 is a critical-severity Authentication Bypass by Alternate Name (CWE-289) 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 39th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to IA-2 (Identification and Authentication (Organizational Users)) and IA-4 (Identifier Management) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2025-13613 is an authentication bypass vulnerability affecting the Elated Membership plugin for WordPress in all versions up to and including 1.2. The issue stems from the plugin failing to properly log in a user after data verification through the 'eltdf_membership_check_facebook_user' and 'eltdf_membership_login_user_from_social_network' functions. It has 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-289 (Authentication Bypass by Assumed-Immutable Data).
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability to log in as administrative users, provided they have an existing account on the site—which can be easily created via the default temporary user functionality—and access to the target administrative user's email. Successful exploitation grants full administrative privileges, enabling high-impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability violations, such as data exfiltration, site modification, or complete takeover.
Advisories and further details are available from sources including Wordfence threat intelligence at https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/f15dbce4-2e94-4735-b62b-e32d923c51ce?source=cve and the related ThemeForest page for the esMarts theme at https://themeforest.net/item/esmarts-a-modern-education-and-lms-theme/20987760, published on 2025-12-10.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-202359
Vulnerability Data
The Elated Membership plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Authentication Bypass in all versions up to, and including, 1.2. This is due to the plugin not properly logging in a user with the data that was previously verified through the…
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'eltdf_membership_check_facebook_user' and the 'eltdf_membership_login_user_from_social_network' function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to log in as administrative users, as long as they have an existing account on the site which can easily be created by default through the temp user functionality, and access to the administrative user's email.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 8 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
V8.3.3V10.3.2V6.4.3
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Requiring unique identification and authentication of users forces the system to resolve all name variants to a single identity before access is granted.
Identifier management directly requires authorization and uniqueness checks that eliminate alternate-name aliases for the same actor or resource.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Strong authentication mechanisms directly prevent name-based bypass when they enforce canonical name checks.
Proper identity management reduces alternate-name collisions but does not guarantee canonicalization inside the auth decision.
Authorization policy enforcement assumes correct identity; the weakness occurs before policy is applied.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Access-control policy can mandate canonical-name checks but does not prescribe the technical implementation.
Identity-management processes can require unique, canonical identifiers, reducing alternate-name bypass risk.
Proper management of authentication credentials can include rules against duplicate or alias identities.
Access-rights provisioning can enforce canonical-name validation when granting rights.
Information-access-restriction mechanisms can implement canonical-name checks to prevent bypass.
Secure-authentication controls can require canonical identifiers and reject alternate names.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).
Oracle Linux 8 (1 rule)
- V-248538 OL 8 operating systems booted with United Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) must have a unique name for the grub superusers account when booting into single-user mode and maintenance. prevents CWE-289
RHEL 7 (1 rule)
- V-244558 Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems version 7.2 or newer booted with United Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) must have a unique name for the grub superusers account when booting into single-user mode and maintenance. prevents CWE-289