CVE-2025-13764
Published: 11 December 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-13764 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-3 (Access Enforcement).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-13764 is a privilege escalation vulnerability (CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management) affecting the WP CarDealer plugin for WordPress in all versions up to and including 1.2.16. The flaw resides in the 'WP_CarDealer_User::process_register' function, which does not restrict the user roles that can be specified during registration, enabling attackers to assign elevated privileges to newly created accounts.
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability remotely with low complexity and no user interaction, as reflected in its critical 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 submitting a registration request with the 'administrator' role, attackers gain full administrator access to the WordPress site, allowing high-impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability violations such as data exfiltration, site modification, or further malware deployment.
Advisories providing additional details, including potential mitigations and patches, are available from Wordfence at https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/f4893d9c-e039-43df-80b9-dbe42374caed?source=cve and the plugin's listing on ThemeForest at https://themeforest.net/item/boxcar-automotive-car-dealer-wordpress-theme/49741717. Security practitioners should review these sources for updates beyond version 1.2.16 and apply them promptly to affected installations.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-202642
Vulnerability details
The WP CarDealer plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.2.16. This is due to the 'WP_CarDealer_User::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 allows unauthenticated exploitation of a public-facing WordPress plugin (T1190) to achieve privilege escalation by registering an administrator account (T1068).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
AC-2 requires procedures for managing account creation and privilege assignment, directly preventing unauthenticated attackers from self-registering with administrator roles.
AC-6 enforces least privilege during user registration, ensuring new accounts cannot be assigned excessive roles like administrator.
AC-3 mandates enforcement mechanisms to restrict user roles during registration processes, blocking unauthorized privilege escalation.