CVE-2025-13559: EduKart Pro Privilege Escalation Flaw

CVE-2025-13559 Overview

The EduKart Pro plugin for WordPress contains a critical Privilege Escalation vulnerability affecting all versions up to and including 1.0.3. The vulnerability exists in the edukart_pro_register_user_front_end function, which fails to properly restrict the user roles that can be specified during registration. This security flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to register accounts with the administrator role, effectively gaining full administrative control over the affected WordPress site.

Critical Impact

Unauthenticated attackers can gain complete administrator access to WordPress sites by exploiting the unrestricted role assignment during user registration, leading to full site compromise.

Affected Products

• EduKart Pro WordPress Plugin versions up to and including 1.0.3
• WordPress sites utilizing the EduKart Pro plugin for online courses and education LMS functionality

Discovery Timeline

• November 25, 2025 - CVE-2025-13559 published to NVD
• November 25, 2025 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-13559

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability represents a classic case of Improper Privilege Management (CWE-269). The edukart_pro_register_user_front_end function processes user registration requests from the front-end of WordPress sites without implementing proper validation or restrictions on the user role parameter. In WordPress, user roles (such as subscriber, contributor, author, editor, and administrator) define the capabilities and permissions assigned to each user account.

The vulnerable function accepts user-supplied input for the role parameter during the registration process and fails to validate that the requested role is appropriate for public registration. As a result, an attacker can craft a malicious registration request that specifies the administrator role, and the system will create an administrator account without any authentication or authorization checks.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability lies in the lack of input validation and role whitelisting within the edukart_pro_register_user_front_end function. The function does not implement any checks to ensure that the role parameter is restricted to safe, public-facing roles (typically subscriber for WordPress). Instead, it blindly accepts and applies whatever role value is provided in the registration request, including privileged roles like administrator.

Attack Vector

The attack can be executed remotely over the network without any prior authentication or user interaction. An attacker simply needs to identify a WordPress site running the vulnerable EduKart Pro plugin and submit a crafted registration request to the front-end registration endpoint. By including the administrator role value in the registration request parameters, the attacker's new account will be created with full administrative privileges.

Once administrator access is obtained, the attacker can:

• Modify or delete all site content
• Install malicious plugins or themes
• Create additional backdoor accounts
• Access sensitive user data
• Pivot to other systems in the hosting environment

The vulnerability can be exploited by submitting a registration request to the WordPress site with the role parameter set to administrator. The edukart_pro_register_user_front_end function processes this request without validating the role value, resulting in the creation of an administrator account. For detailed technical information, refer to the Wordfence Vulnerability Report.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-13559

Indicators of Compromise

• New administrator accounts appearing in WordPress without authorized creation
• Unfamiliar user registrations with elevated privileges in the wp_users and wp_usermeta tables
• Suspicious POST requests to registration endpoints containing role=administrator or similar parameters
• Unexpected changes to site content, themes, or plugins following unauthorized admin access

Detection Strategies

• Monitor WordPress user registration logs for accounts created with administrator or editor roles
• Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block registration requests containing privileged role parameters
• Review database queries targeting wp_usermeta for wp_capabilities entries indicating unauthorized privilege assignments
• Configure alerts for new user creation events in WordPress admin audit logs

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable comprehensive logging of all user registration activities including role assignments
• Deploy file integrity monitoring on WordPress core files, plugins, and themes to detect post-compromise modifications
• Implement real-time alerting for any new administrator account creation
• Regularly audit the WordPress users table for unexpected accounts with elevated privileges

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-13559

Immediate Actions Required

• Immediately deactivate the EduKart Pro plugin until a patched version is available
• Audit all existing WordPress user accounts for unauthorized administrator or editor accounts created after plugin installation
• Remove any suspicious or unrecognized administrator accounts
• Review site content and plugin installations for signs of compromise or backdoor installation
• Change all administrator passwords and regenerate WordPress security keys

Patch Information

At the time of publication, no official patch has been confirmed for this vulnerability. Site administrators should monitor the ThemeForest Product Page and the Wordfence Vulnerability Report for updates regarding a security patch for EduKart Pro versions after 1.0.3.

Workarounds

• Disable the EduKart Pro plugin's front-end registration functionality until a patch is released
• Implement WAF rules to block registration requests containing role parameters that specify administrative privileges
• Use WordPress security plugins to enforce role restrictions on new user registrations
• Consider temporarily disabling all user registration if the plugin's registration feature cannot be isolated

# WordPress configuration to restrict default user role (add to wp-config.php)
# Note: This does not fully mitigate the vulnerability but adds defense-in-depth
define('WP_DEFAULT_USER_ROLE', 'subscriber');

# Review all administrator accounts
wp user list --role=administrator --fields=ID,user_login,user_registered

# Remove suspicious administrator accounts by ID
# wp user delete <USER_ID> --reassign=1