CVE-2025-5953
📋 TL;DR
The WP Human Resource Management plugin for WordPress has a privilege escalation vulnerability that allows authenticated users with Employee-level access or higher to elevate their privileges to administrator. This occurs because the plugin fails to verify authorization when users assign roles through AJAX handlers. All WordPress sites using vulnerable plugin versions are affected.
💻 Affected Systems
- WP Human Resource Management WordPress Plugin
📦 What is this software?
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Attackers gain full administrative control over the WordPress site, allowing them to install malicious plugins/themes, modify content, steal sensitive data, or establish persistent backdoors.
Likely Case
Malicious employees or compromised accounts escalate to administrator and perform unauthorized actions like data exfiltration, site defacement, or installing cryptocurrency miners.
If Mitigated
With proper role-based access controls and monitoring, unauthorized privilege changes are detected and prevented before significant damage occurs.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires authenticated access but is straightforward once an attacker has valid credentials.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 2.2.18 or later
Vendor Advisory: https://wordpress.org/plugins/hrm/#developers
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Log into WordPress admin panel. 2. Navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins. 3. Find 'WP Human Resource Management'. 4. Click 'Update Now' if update is available. 5. Alternatively, download version 2.2.18+ from WordPress.org and manually update.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Disable vulnerable plugin
allTemporarily deactivate the WP Human Resource Management plugin until patched
wp plugin deactivate hrm
Restrict user role assignments
allUse WordPress capabilities manager to restrict who can assign administrator roles
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement strict access controls and monitoring for user role changes
- Use web application firewall rules to block suspicious AJAX requests to employee.php endpoints
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check plugin version in WordPress admin under Plugins → Installed Plugins. If version is between 2.0.0 and 2.2.17 inclusive, the site is vulnerable.Check Version:
wp plugin get hrm --field=versionVerify Fix Applied:
After updating, verify plugin version is 2.2.18 or higher. Test that authenticated non-admin users cannot change their role to administrator.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unusual user role changes from non-admin to administrator
- Multiple AJAX requests to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action parameters related to employee management
- Failed authorization attempts followed by successful role changes
Network Indicators:
- POST requests to admin-ajax.php with 'action' parameter containing 'ajax_insert_employee' or 'update_empoyee' and 'role' parameter set to 'administrator'
SIEM Query:
source="wordpress.log" AND ("role changed to administrator" OR "ajax_insert_employee" OR "update_empoyee")🔗 References
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L543
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L591
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L89
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/hrm/#developers
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/3ba33a18-429f-4a3e-b018-bdfbbe6e8482?source=cve
