CVE-2025-31897: Arrow Custom Feed for Twitter XSS Flaw

CVE-2025-31897 Overview

CVE-2025-31897 is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the Arrow Plugins Arrow Custom Feed for Twitter WordPress plugin (arrow-twitter-feed). The flaw affects all versions up to and including 1.5.3. Attackers with low-privilege authenticated access can inject malicious JavaScript that persists in the application and executes in the browsers of users who load affected pages. The issue is classified under CWE-79, Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation.

Critical Impact

Authenticated attackers can inject persistent JavaScript payloads that execute in visitor and administrator browsers, enabling session theft, forced redirects, and administrative account takeover through scope-changing script execution.

Affected Products

• Arrow Plugins Arrow Custom Feed for Twitter (arrow-twitter-feed) — versions up to and including 1.5.3
• WordPress sites with the plugin installed and activated
• Any user session rendering pages that include the injected feed content

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-04-01 - CVE-2025-31897 published to the National Vulnerability Database
• 2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-31897

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability stems from insufficient sanitization and output encoding of user-supplied input rendered through the Arrow Custom Feed for Twitter plugin. Because the payload is stored server-side, it triggers each time an affected page is rendered, without further attacker interaction.

Exploitation requires low privileges and user interaction. The scope changes when the script executes, meaning the injected code can affect a different security context than the attacker's own, such as an authenticated administrator loading the compromised page. Successful exploitation can lead to cookie theft, session hijacking, forced browser actions, and redirection to attacker-controlled infrastructure.

Root Cause

The plugin fails to properly neutralize special characters in inputs that are later reflected into HTML output. Without contextual output encoding or an allow-list based sanitization routine, HTML and JavaScript tokens supplied by an attacker are stored and rendered as executable markup rather than inert text.

Attack Vector

The attack is network-accessible and requires the attacker to hold a low-privilege authenticated role on the target WordPress site. The attacker submits a crafted payload through a plugin input field that reaches persistent storage. When another user, typically an administrator, loads a page that renders the affected data, the browser executes the injected script under the site's origin.

See the Patchstack XSS Vulnerability Advisory for technical disclosure details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-31897

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected <script>, <iframe>, or event-handler attributes (for example onerror=, onload=) stored in plugin configuration or feed data within the wp_options or plugin-specific database tables.
• Outbound HTTP requests from administrator browsers to unfamiliar domains shortly after loading pages that render the Twitter feed widget.
• WordPress user accounts with elevated privileges created or modified without a corresponding administrative action.

Detection Strategies

• Review the plugin database entries for HTML or JavaScript syntax where only plain text should exist.
• Inspect web server access logs for POST requests to plugin endpoints originating from low-privilege accounts that immediately precede anomalous page rendering.
• Deploy Content Security Policy (CSP) reporting to capture inline script violations on pages that embed the plugin output.

Monitoring Recommendations

• Monitor WordPress authentication and role-change events for privilege escalation following administrator page loads.
• Alert on new or modified plugin configuration entries that contain angle brackets, javascript: URIs, or encoded script fragments.
• Correlate browser-side CSP violation reports with backend plugin activity to identify active exploitation attempts.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-31897

Immediate Actions Required

• Deactivate the Arrow Custom Feed for Twitter plugin on any site running version 1.5.3 or earlier until a patched release is confirmed and installed.
• Audit existing plugin data and user-generated content for stored payloads, removing any entries containing script tags or inline event handlers.
• Force password resets and invalidate active sessions for administrator accounts that accessed pages rendering the plugin output during the exposure window.

Patch Information

As of the referenced advisory, the vulnerability affects all versions through 1.5.3. Site owners should monitor the Patchstack advisory and the plugin's WordPress.org listing for a fixed release, and apply updates immediately upon publication.

Workarounds

• Restrict access to plugin configuration to trusted administrators only, revoking Contributor or Editor privileges from untrusted users.
• Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule to block requests containing script tags or common XSS payloads targeting the plugin's endpoints.
• Enforce a strict Content Security Policy that disallows inline scripts and limits script sources to trusted origins.

# Example strict CSP header for WordPress via .htaccess
Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'self'; frame-ancestors 'self'"