CVE-2025-23747: Awesome Timeline Stored XSS Vulnerability

CVE-2025-23747 Overview

CVE-2025-23747 is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the Nitesh Awesome Timeline plugin for WordPress. The flaw affects all versions of the awesome-timeline plugin up to and including 1.0.1. The plugin fails to properly neutralize user-supplied input during web page generation, allowing authenticated attackers with low privileges to inject persistent JavaScript payloads that execute in the browsers of site visitors and administrators.

Critical Impact

An authenticated attacker with contributor-level access can inject stored JavaScript that runs in any user session that renders the affected timeline content, enabling session theft, forced administrative actions, and site defacement.

Affected Products

• Nitesh Awesome Timeline WordPress plugin (awesome-timeline)
• All versions from initial release through 1.0.1
• WordPress installations with the plugin activated

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-02-03 - CVE-2025-23747 published to the National Vulnerability Database
• 2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-23747

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability is a stored Cross-Site Scripting flaw classified under CWE-79, Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation. The Awesome Timeline plugin accepts input through one of its administrative fields and writes that content back into rendered pages without adequate escaping or sanitization.

Exploitation requires an authenticated session with at least contributor-level privileges and involves a user interaction step, such as an administrator viewing a page that contains the malicious payload. Because the payload is stored server-side, it executes for every user who loads the affected content, and the impact crosses privilege boundaries into other administrator sessions.

Successful exploitation yields limited confidentiality, integrity, and availability impact per the CVSS assessment, but the scope change means the injected script can act against a different security authority than the attacker's own account.

Root Cause

The plugin performs insufficient output encoding on data submitted through timeline configuration or content fields. WordPress provides sanitization helpers such as wp_kses_post(), esc_html(), and esc_attr(), but the vulnerable code paths render user input directly into HTML contexts without these controls. Any HTML or JavaScript submitted through the vulnerable input reaches the DOM intact.

Attack Vector

An attacker with a low-privilege authenticated account submits a timeline entry containing a JavaScript payload embedded in an unsanitized field. The payload persists in the WordPress database. When any user, including administrators, loads a page that renders the affected timeline, the browser parses and executes the script in the context of the WordPress site origin. Refer to the Patchstack Vulnerability Report for technical details on the affected input handling.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-23747

Indicators of Compromise

• Timeline entries or plugin configuration values containing <script>, onerror=, onload=, or javascript: payloads
• Unexpected outbound requests from browser sessions of WordPress administrators to attacker-controlled domains
• New administrator accounts, modified user roles, or unauthorized plugin installations following contributor activity
• WordPress database rows in wp_posts or plugin option tables containing HTML event handler attributes

Detection Strategies

• Scan the WordPress database for HTML and JavaScript patterns in fields written by the Awesome Timeline plugin
• Review web server access logs for requests to timeline endpoints originating from contributor or author accounts followed by administrator page views
• Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule that flags script-like payloads submitted to plugin administrative endpoints
• Correlate content-editing activity with subsequent privilege changes or session anomalies

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable WordPress audit logging to record post creation, revision, and plugin configuration changes by low-privilege users
• Monitor Content Security Policy (CSP) violation reports for inline script execution on pages rendering timelines
• Alert on newly created administrator accounts or role escalations within 24 hours of contributor account activity

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-23747

Immediate Actions Required

• Deactivate the Awesome Timeline plugin on any WordPress site running version 1.0.1 or earlier until a patched release is confirmed
• Audit all existing timeline content and plugin option values for injected HTML or JavaScript and remove malicious entries
• Rotate credentials and invalidate active sessions for any administrator who viewed pages that could have executed injected scripts
• Restrict contributor and author account creation and review recently added low-privilege users

Patch Information

At the time of publication, the Patchstack advisory lists the vulnerability as affecting versions up to and including 1.0.1. Administrators should consult the plugin repository for the latest release and apply any vendor update immediately once available.

Workarounds

• Remove or deactivate the awesome-timeline plugin until a fixed version is installed
• Enforce a strict Content Security Policy that disallows inline scripts and unknown script sources to limit XSS impact
• Restrict plugin administrative endpoints via server-side access controls to trusted administrator IP ranges
• Apply a virtual patch through a WordPress-aware WAF that blocks script tags and event handler attributes in plugin input fields

# Example CSP header to reduce XSS impact on WordPress
Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'self'; frame-ancestors 'self'; report-uri /csp-report"