Overview
CVE-2025-12586 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability found in the Conditional Maintenance Mode for WordPress plugin. Affecting all versions up to and including 1.0.0, this flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to potentially enable or disable the maintenance mode of a WordPress website. The vulnerability stems from a lack of nonce validation during the process of toggling the maintenance mode status.
Technical Details
The vulnerability exists because the plugin does not properly validate the origin of requests to toggle the maintenance mode. Specifically, the code responsible for enabling or disabling maintenance mode (as observed in the plugin’s code) lacks a nonce check. A nonce (number used once) is a cryptographic token that verifies the authenticity of a request, ensuring it originates from the intended user and not a malicious third party. Without this check, an attacker can craft a malicious HTML page containing a forged request. If an administrator visits this page while logged into their WordPress dashboard, the browser will automatically send the forged request to the WordPress site, enabling or disabling maintenance mode without the administrator’s knowledge or consent.
CVSS Analysis
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score for CVE-2025-12586 is 4.3 (Medium). This score reflects the following characteristics:
- Attack Vector (AV): Network (N) – The attack can be performed remotely over the network.
- Attack Complexity (AC): High (H) – Exploitation requires a high degree of skill or effort, as the attacker must trick an administrator into performing an action.
- Privileges Required (PR): None (N) – No privileges are required to exploit the vulnerability once the administrator is tricked into performing the action.
- User Interaction (UI): Required (R) – User interaction (specifically, an administrator clicking a link) is required for successful exploitation.
- Scope (S): Unchanged (U) – An exploited vulnerability results in no change to the security scope.
- Confidentiality Impact (C): None (N) – There is no impact to data confidentiality.
- Integrity Impact (I): Low (L) – There is a limited impact to data integrity, as an attacker can only enable or disable maintenance mode.
- Availability Impact (A): None (N) – There is no impact to system availability.
Possible Impact
Successful exploitation of CVE-2025-12586 could lead to the following:
- Denial of Service (Temporary): An attacker could disable maintenance mode, potentially exposing a vulnerable or under-development site to the public.
- Website Disruption: An attacker could enable maintenance mode unexpectedly, causing temporary disruption for legitimate users.
- Phishing/Malware Distribution: If maintenance mode is unexpectedly disabled on a site undergoing updates, attackers could inject malicious code before updates are complete.
Mitigation or Patch Steps
The recommended mitigation is to immediately update the Conditional Maintenance Mode for WordPress plugin to a version that includes a fix for this vulnerability. Check the WordPress plugin repository or the plugin developer’s website for updates. If an update is not yet available, consider temporarily disabling the plugin until a patched version is released.
Unfortunately, as of this article, there is no patch available. Consider removing the plugin until a patched version is released.
References
WordPress Plugin Trac – Maintenance_mode.php
Wordfence Threat Intelligence – CVE-2025-12586
