CVE-2025-2558: Critical Local File Inclusion Vulnerability in The-wound WordPress Theme

Overview

The cybersecurity community has recently identified a severe vulnerability, tagged as CVE-2025-2558. This vulnerability affects the WordPress theme known as The-wound, specifically version 0.0.1, and it poses an imminent threat to WordPress sites using this theme. The flaw allows unauthenticated users to perform Local File Inclusion (LFI) attacks, potentially leading to system compromise or data leakage. The issue arises due to a failure to validate some parameters before using them to generate paths passed to include function/s.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-2558
Severity: Critical (8.6/10 on CVSS)
Attack Vector: Local File Inclusion (LFI)
Privileges Required: None (Unauthenticated attack)
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

The-wound WordPress Theme | 0.0.1

How the Exploit Works

This vulnerability stems from the theme’s failure to validate parameters before using them to generate file paths. Due to this, an unauthenticated attacker can manipulate these parameters to pass different paths to the include function/s. This allows the attacker to perform a Local File Inclusion (LFI) attack, thereby gaining access to any file on the server. The ability to download arbitrary files from the server can lead to a complete system compromise or data leakage.

Conceptual Example Code

Here is a conceptual example of how this vulnerability might be exploited:

GET /path/to/theme/file.php?param=../../../../etc/passwd HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-wordpress-site.com

In this example, an attacker manipulates the ‘param’ parameter to traverse the file system (‘../../../../’) and access the ‘/etc/passwd’ file, a common target containing user account details on Linux systems.

Mitigation

To mitigate this vulnerability, users are advised to apply the vendor’s patch as soon as it becomes available. Until the patch is released, users can implement a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as temporary mitigation. These tools can help detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability, but they are not a complete solution. It is also recommended to regularly update and patch all software to prevent potential attacks through other vulnerabilities.