CVE-2025-12157
📋 TL;DR
The Simple User Capabilities WordPress plugin has an authentication bypass vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers to reset any user's capabilities via an AJAX endpoint. This affects all WordPress sites using this plugin up to version 1.0. Attackers can modify user permissions without requiring login credentials.
💻 Affected Systems
- Simple User Capabilities WordPress Plugin
⚠️ Manual Verification Required
This CVE does not have specific version information in our database, so automatic vulnerability detection cannot determine if your system is affected.
Why? The CVE database entry doesn't specify which versions are vulnerable (no version ranges provided by the vendor/NVD).
🔒 Custom verification scripts are available for registered users. Sign up free to download automated test scripts.
- Review the CVE details at NVD
- Check vendor security advisories for your specific version
- Test if the vulnerability is exploitable in your environment
- Consider updating to the latest version as a precaution
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Attackers could reset administrator capabilities to remove all privileges, effectively locking legitimate admins out of their WordPress sites while potentially elevating attacker-controlled accounts to administrative privileges.
Likely Case
Attackers will reset capabilities for high-privilege users to disrupt site administration or modify capabilities to gain unauthorized access to restricted areas of the WordPress site.
If Mitigated
With proper network controls and monitoring, impact is limited to temporary administrative disruption that can be quickly detected and remediated.
🎯 Exploit Status
The vulnerability requires only a single HTTP POST request to the vulnerable AJAX endpoint with minimal technical knowledge.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 1.1 or later
Vendor Advisory: https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-user-capabilities/
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Log into WordPress admin panel. 2. Navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins. 3. Find Simple User Capabilities plugin. 4. Click 'Update Now' if update is available. 5. If no update appears, manually download version 1.1+ from WordPress.org and replace plugin files.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Disable vulnerable AJAX endpoint
allAdd code to WordPress theme's functions.php to disable the vulnerable AJAX handler
add_action('init', function() { remove_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_reset_capability', 'reset_capability_callback'); });
Web Application Firewall rule
linuxBlock requests to the vulnerable AJAX endpoint using WAF or .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^wp-admin/admin-ajax\.php\?action=reset_capability - [F,L]
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Disable the Simple User Capabilities plugin immediately via WordPress admin or by renaming the plugin directory
- Implement strict network access controls to limit access to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php from untrusted networks
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check WordPress admin → Plugins → Simple User Capabilities. If version is 1.0 or lower, the site is vulnerable.Check Version:
grep -r "Version:" /path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/simple-user-capabilities/Verify Fix Applied:
After updating, verify plugin version shows 1.1 or higher in WordPress admin plugins page.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- POST requests to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action=reset_capability parameter from unauthenticated IPs
- Multiple capability modification events in WordPress user logs
Network Indicators:
- HTTP POST requests to WordPress AJAX endpoints with reset_capability parameter from external IPs
SIEM Query:
source="wordpress.log" AND "admin-ajax.php" AND "reset_capability" AND NOT (user!="-")