CVE-2025-23853
Published: 14 February 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-23853 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 40.1th 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).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Requires timely patching of the specific reflected XSS flaw in NoFollow Free plugin versions up to 1.6.3 to eliminate the vulnerability.
Mandates filtering of web page output to neutralize injected scripts, directly addressing improper neutralization during page generation in reflected XSS.
Enforces validation of user inputs to detect and reject malicious XSS payloads before they are reflected in web responses.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Reflected XSS in public-facing WordPress plugin directly enables exploitation via malicious links for arbitrary JavaScript execution in browser context.
NVD Description
Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in michelem NoFollow Free nofollow-free allows Reflected XSS.This issue affects NoFollow Free: from n/a through <= 1.6.3.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-23853 is an Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation vulnerability, classified as Reflected Cross-site Scripting (XSS) under CWE-79, in the NoFollow Free WordPress plugin by michelem. The issue affects all versions of NoFollow Free up to and including 1.6.3.
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 required privileges, but necessitating user interaction. Remote attackers can leverage reflected XSS to execute arbitrary scripts in a victim's browser context upon successful trickery, such as via malicious links, achieving low impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability with a changed scope.
Mitigation guidance is available in the Patchstack advisory at https://patchstack.com/database/Wordpress/Plugin/nofollow-free/vulnerability/wordpress-nofollow-free-plugin-1-6-3-reflected-cross-site-scripting-xss-vulnerability?_s_id=cve.
Details
- CWE(s)