Overview
CVE-2025-12587 identifies a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability within the Peer Publish plugin for WordPress. This vulnerability affects all versions up to and including 1.0. The vulnerability stems from a lack of nonce validation on key website management pages within the plugin’s admin interface.
Technical Details
The Peer Publish plugin fails to properly validate nonces on its website management pages. Specifically, the newwebsite.php and websites.php files located in the /admin/admin-pages/ directory of the plugin lack sufficient CSRF protection. This allows an attacker to forge requests that can add, modify, or delete website configurations within the Peer Publish plugin.
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by crafting a malicious HTML page containing a form that submits a request to the vulnerable endpoint. If a logged-in administrator visits this page, their browser will automatically send the forged request to the WordPress server, performing the action as if the administrator initiated it themselves.
Vulnerable files include:
admin/admin-pages/newwebsite.php(see: newwebsite.php#L17)admin/admin-pages/websites.php(see: websites.php#L20)
CVSS Analysis
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score for CVE-2025-12587 is 4.3 (Medium). The CVSS vector is likely AV:N/AC:R/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N, which translates to:
- Attack Vector: Network (AV:N)
- Attack Complexity: Required (AC:R) – Requires user interaction
- Privileges Required: None (PR:N)
- User Interaction: Required (UI:R) – Requires an administrator to click a link
- Scope: Unchanged (S:U)
- Confidentiality: None (C:N)
- Integrity: Low (I:L) – Limited modification of data possible
- Availability: None (A:N)
Possible Impact
Successful exploitation of this CSRF vulnerability can have several negative impacts:
- Unauthorized Website Configuration Changes: Attackers can add, modify, or delete website configurations managed by the Peer Publish plugin. This can lead to disruption of services.
- Malicious Redirection: Attackers could potentially redirect users to malicious websites by modifying website settings.
- Data Manipulation: Depending on the functionality of the Peer Publish plugin, attackers could potentially manipulate data associated with the managed websites.
Mitigation or Patch Steps
The most effective mitigation is to update the Peer Publish plugin to a version that addresses this vulnerability. As of this writing, a patched version is likely not available, given the publication date. However, users should monitor the WordPress Plugin Repository for updates from the plugin developer.
In the absence of an official patch, consider the following temporary workarounds (with caution, as they may impact functionality):
- Disable the plugin: If the Peer Publish plugin is not essential, temporarily disabling it will eliminate the risk.
- Implement CSRF protection manually (advanced): If you have development expertise, you can attempt to add CSRF protection to the
newwebsite.phpandwebsites.phpfiles. This involves generating and validating nonces for each request. However, this is not recommended unless you are confident in your ability to implement it correctly.
