CVE-2025-15482: Chapa Payment Gateway Information Disclosure

CVE-2025-15482 Overview

CVE-2025-15482 is a sensitive information exposure vulnerability in the Chapa Payment Gateway Plugin for WooCommerce, a WordPress plugin used to process payments through the Chapa payment service. The flaw affects all versions up to and including 1.0.3 and resides in the chapa_proceed WooCommerce API endpoint. Unauthenticated attackers can query this endpoint over the network to retrieve sensitive merchant data, including the Chapa secret API key. Exposure of the secret key allows an attacker to impersonate the merchant against the Chapa payment API and access transaction-related data. The issue is categorized under CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor.

Critical Impact

Unauthenticated remote attackers can extract the merchant's Chapa secret API key directly from the vulnerable endpoint, enabling impersonation of the merchant against the Chapa payment platform.

Affected Products

• Chapa Payment Gateway Plugin for WooCommerce — all versions through 1.0.3
• WordPress sites running the affected plugin with WooCommerce enabled
• Merchant Chapa API credentials configured within the plugin

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-02-04 - CVE-2025-15482 published to NVD
• 2026-04-15 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-15482

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability resides in the chapa_proceed WooCommerce API endpoint exposed by the Chapa Payment Gateway Plugin. The endpoint returns response data that includes the merchant's configured Chapa secret API key without enforcing authentication or authorization controls. Because WooCommerce API endpoints registered through the plugin are reachable over standard HTTP, any remote actor can invoke the endpoint and parse the response.

The attack vector is network based and requires no privileges or user interaction. The impact is limited to confidentiality, with no direct integrity or availability impact on the WordPress site itself. However, disclosure of the secret API key extends the impact to the Chapa merchant account, where the attacker can interact with the payment API as the merchant.

Root Cause

The root cause is missing access control on a sensitive endpoint combined with overexposure of configuration data in the endpoint response. The plugin source at includes/class-waf-wc-chapa-gateway.php handles chapa_proceed requests without verifying the requester and returns merchant configuration values, including the secret key, in its output. See the WordPress Plugin Source Code for the affected logic.

Attack Vector

An unauthenticated attacker sends an HTTP request to the WooCommerce API path that maps to chapa_proceed on a vulnerable WordPress site. The plugin processes the request and returns response data containing the Chapa secret API key. The attacker extracts the key and uses it to authenticate to the Chapa payment API as the merchant. No exploit code is currently published, and the issue is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

Refer to the Wordfence Vulnerability Report for additional analysis of the disclosure path.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-15482

Indicators of Compromise

• Unauthenticated HTTP GET or POST requests to WooCommerce API routes referencing chapa_proceed from unknown source IP addresses.
• Web server access logs showing repeated requests to /wc-api/ or /?wc-api= paths associated with the Chapa gateway.
• Outbound API activity to the Chapa payment platform from IPs that are not the merchant's normal operational ranges.
• Unexpected transactions, refunds, or configuration changes within the Chapa merchant dashboard.

Detection Strategies

• Inspect WordPress and WooCommerce access logs for requests targeting the chapa_proceed action and alert on responses that exceed typical size for transaction initiation calls.
• Deploy WAF rules that flag unauthenticated requests to WooCommerce API endpoints associated with the Chapa plugin.
• Correlate web request telemetry with WordPress plugin inventory to identify hosts running Chapa Payment Gateway versions 1.0.3 or earlier.

Monitoring Recommendations

• Monitor the Chapa merchant dashboard and audit logs for API calls originating from unexpected IP addresses or user agents.
• Track plugin version data across the WordPress estate and alert when vulnerable versions remain installed past the patch deadline.
• Enable alerting on outbound DNS or TLS connections to the Chapa API from non-production hosts.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-15482

Immediate Actions Required

• Update the Chapa Payment Gateway Plugin for WooCommerce to a version later than 1.0.3 once the vendor publishes a fix.
• Rotate the Chapa secret API key in the merchant dashboard immediately, since any prior exposure cannot be reversed.
• Review Chapa merchant account activity for unauthorized API calls or transactions during the exposure window.

Patch Information

At the time of NVD publication, the plugin is vulnerable in all versions up to and including 1.0.3. Administrators should monitor the WordPress Plugin Source Code repository and the Wordfence Vulnerability Report for an updated release that adds authentication checks and removes the secret key from the chapa_proceed response.

Workarounds

• Deactivate and remove the Chapa Payment Gateway Plugin until a patched release is available, and route checkout through an alternative payment method.
• Block external requests to the chapa_proceed WooCommerce API endpoint at the web server, reverse proxy, or WAF layer.
• Restrict access to /wc-api/ paths to known IP ranges where business requirements permit.

# Configuration example: block unauthenticated access to the vulnerable endpoint at the Nginx layer
location ~* /wc-api/.*chapa_proceed {
    deny all;
    return 403;
}