CVE-2025-15027
Published: 08 February 2026
Summary
CVE-2025-15027 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management (CWE-269) vulnerability in Wordpress (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 32.8th 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-2025-15027 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the JAY Login & Register plugin for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 2.6.03. The flaw arises in the 'jay_login_register_ajax_create_final_user' function, which permits updating arbitrary user meta without sufficient validation, allowing attackers to modify user privileges.
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability remotely over the network with low attack complexity and no user interaction required, as reflected in its CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). Successful exploitation enables elevation of privileges to administrator level, potentially granting full control over the WordPress site. The issue is linked to CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management).
Advisories and related resources, including Wordfence's threat intelligence at https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/b08198a6-10e8-44ca-a1c5-8d987d85c469?source=cve and the vulnerable source code on WordPress Trac at https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/jay-login-register/tags/2.5.01/includes/jay-login-register-ajax-handler.php#L788, provide further technical details for analysis and remediation.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-206901
Vulnerability details
The JAY Login & Register plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 2.6.03. This is due to the plugin allowing a user to update arbitrary user meta through the 'jay_login_register_ajax_create_final_user' function. This…
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makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to elevate their privileges to that of an administrator.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Remote unauthenticated privilege escalation via improper user meta validation in public-facing WordPress plugin directly maps to exploitation for privilege escalation and public-facing app exploitation.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Enforces least privilege to directly counter improper privilege management enabling unauthenticated escalation to administrator via arbitrary user meta updates.
Manages account creation, modification, and privilege assignment to prevent unauthorized changes to user privileges through the vulnerable AJAX function.
Requires validation of information inputs to the 'jay_login_register_ajax_create_final_user' function, blocking arbitrary user meta modifications by unauthenticated attackers.