CVE-2025-22735
Published: 21 January 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-22735 is a high-severity Cross-site Scripting (CWE-79) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 7.1 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 32.1th 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 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-15 (Information Output Filtering).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-22735 is an Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation vulnerability, classified as Reflected Cross-site Scripting (XSS) under CWE-79, in the WordPress Tag Cloud Plugin – Tag Groups (tag-groups) developed by Steve Burge. The issue affects the plugin from unspecified initial versions through 2.0.4.
The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.1 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L), indicating it is exploitable over the network with low attack complexity, no privileges required, but user interaction needed, and with changed scope leading to low impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Any unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit it by tricking a user into interacting with a maliciously crafted request, such as a URL containing injected scripts reflected in the page.
The Patchstack advisory at https://patchstack.com/database/Wordpress/Plugin/tag-groups/vulnerability/wordpress-tag-cloud-plugin-tag-groups-plugin-2-0-4-reflected-cross-site-scripting-xss-vulnerability?_s_id=cve provides further details on the vulnerability and mitigation recommendations.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-2953
Vulnerability details
Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in Steve Burge WordPress Tag Cloud Plugin – Tag Groups tag-groups allows Reflected XSS.This issue affects WordPress Tag Cloud Plugin – Tag Groups: from n/a through <= 2.0.4.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Reflected XSS in public-facing WordPress plugin enables exploitation of public-facing applications (T1190) and directly facilitates browser session hijacking via arbitrary script execution in victim browser (T1185).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly prevents reflected XSS by requiring filtering of web page outputs to neutralize injected scripts from untrusted inputs.
Prevents exploitation of the improper input neutralization by validating all user-supplied inputs before processing in the WordPress plugin.
Addresses the specific flaw in Tag Groups plugin versions <=2.0.4 by requiring timely identification, reporting, and patching of known vulnerabilities.