Overview
A critical Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability has been identified in the Top Friends plugin for WordPress. Designated as CVE-2025-12827, this flaw affects all versions up to and including 0.3. It allows unauthenticated attackers to potentially modify the plugin’s settings if they can trick a site administrator into performing an action, such as clicking a malicious link.
Technical Details
The vulnerability stems from the absence of proper nonce validation within the top_friends_options_subpanel() function of the Top Friends plugin. Nonce validation is a crucial security mechanism that prevents CSRF attacks by ensuring that requests originate from the legitimate user interface and not from a malicious third party. Without it, an attacker can craft a malicious request to change plugin settings, and if an administrator with active authentication visits the crafted page or link, the request will be executed as if it originated from the administrator.
The vulnerable code can be found in the top_friends.php file within the plugin’s directory, specifically in the top_friends_options_subpanel() function.
CVSS Analysis
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) has assigned a score of 4.3 (Medium) to CVE-2025-12827. This score reflects the following factors:
- Attack Vector (AV): Network (N)
- Attack Complexity (AC): Medium (M) – Requires user interaction
- Privileges Required (PR): None (N) – No privileges required
- User Interaction (UI): Required (R)
- Scope (S): Unchanged (U)
- Confidentiality Impact (C): None (N)
- Integrity Impact (I): Low (L)
- Availability Impact (A): None (N)
The medium severity is largely attributed to the need for user interaction (the administrator clicking a link) to exploit the vulnerability.
Possible Impact
Successful exploitation of this CSRF vulnerability could allow an attacker to:
- Modify plugin settings. Depending on the settings exposed, this could lead to a variety of outcomes.
- Potentially inject malicious code or scripts into the plugin’s configuration.
- Compromise the security posture of the WordPress website.
Mitigation and Patch Steps
The most effective mitigation is to immediately update the Top Friends plugin to a version that addresses this vulnerability. If an updated version is not yet available, consider temporarily disabling the plugin until a patch is released.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, there isn’t a patched version. Therefore, disabling the plugin is the recommended course of action until an update is available.
WordPress users are strongly encouraged to monitor the WordPress plugin repository and the plugin developer’s website for updates.
References
- CVE ID: CVE-2025-12827
- Vulnerable Code: top_friends.php (Line 155)
- Wordfence Threat Intelligence: Wordfence Analysis of CVE-2025-12827
