CVE-2025-30534
📋 TL;DR
A Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Image Captcha WordPress plugin allows attackers to trick authenticated administrators into performing unintended actions. This affects WordPress sites using Image Captcha plugin versions up to 1.2. Attackers could change plugin settings without the admin's knowledge.
💻 Affected Systems
- WordPress Image Captcha 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 disable or modify the captcha protection entirely, allowing automated attacks like comment spam, brute force login attempts, or form submission abuse to bypass captcha controls.
Likely Case
Attackers would typically use this to disable captcha protection temporarily to launch automated attacks against the WordPress site, such as comment spam campaigns or brute force login attempts.
If Mitigated
With proper CSRF protections and user awareness, the risk is minimal as it requires the admin to be tricked into clicking a malicious link while authenticated.
🎯 Exploit Status
CSRF attacks are well-understood and easy to weaponize. Exploitation requires tricking an authenticated admin into visiting a malicious page.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 1.3 or later
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Log into WordPress admin panel. 2. Go to Plugins → Installed Plugins. 3. Find 'Image Captcha' and check if update is available. 4. Click 'Update Now' if update to 1.3+ is available. 5. If no update available, consider disabling or removing the plugin.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Add CSRF Protection Manually
allAdd nonce verification to plugin's admin form handling
Requires modifying plugin PHP files - not recommended for non-developers
Disable Plugin Temporarily
linuxDeactivate the Image Captcha plugin until patched
wp plugin deactivate image-captcha
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to detect CSRF attempts
- Educate administrators about phishing risks and require them to log out of admin sessions when not actively managing the site
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check WordPress admin → Plugins → Installed Plugins, find Image Captcha and check version numberCheck Version:
wp plugin get image-captcha --field=versionVerify Fix Applied:
Verify Image Captcha plugin version is 1.3 or higher in WordPress admin panel📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unexpected changes to Image Captcha plugin settings in WordPress logs
- Multiple failed captcha validations after settings changes
Network Indicators:
- POST requests to /wp-admin/admin.php?page=image-captcha from unexpected referrers
- CSRF token missing in admin form submissions
SIEM Query:
source="wordpress" AND (uri_path="/wp-admin/admin.php" AND query_string="page=image-captcha") AND referrer NOT CONTAINS "yourdomain.com"