CVE-2025-49069: Contact Forms by Cimatti CSRF Vulnerability

CVE-2025-49069 Overview

CVE-2025-49069 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability affecting the Contact Forms by Cimatti WordPress plugin. The flaw impacts all versions up to and including 1.9.8. An attacker can craft a malicious web page that, when visited by an authenticated administrator, triggers unintended state-changing actions in the plugin. Successful exploitation requires user interaction and results in limited integrity impact without compromising confidentiality or availability. The weakness is categorized under CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery.

Critical Impact
An attacker can trick an authenticated WordPress administrator into submitting forged requests that modify plugin state or configuration without their consent.

Affected Products

Contact Forms by Cimatti WordPress plugin versions through 1.9.8
WordPress installations with the contact-forms plugin enabled
Sites running any earlier release of the plugin without a CSRF patch

Discovery Timeline

2025-06-02 - CVE-2025-49069 published to NVD
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-49069

Vulnerability Analysis

The Contact Forms by Cimatti plugin fails to enforce anti-CSRF protections on one or more state-changing request handlers. WordPress provides wp_nonce_field() and check_admin_referer() primitives to defend against forged requests, but the affected plugin code paths do not validate a nonce or origin before processing input. An attacker who lures an authenticated administrator to a malicious site can cause the browser to issue authenticated requests to the WordPress instance, executing plugin actions with the victim's privileges.

The attack is limited in scope. It requires user interaction and yields low integrity impact, with no direct data exfiltration or denial of service. However, an attacker can alter plugin configuration or form data, which may enable follow-on attacks such as stored payload injection depending on the specific handler abused.

Root Cause

The root cause is missing or improperly implemented CSRF token validation in privileged request handlers. Without nonce verification, the plugin cannot distinguish between legitimate administrator actions and requests originating from an attacker-controlled origin that ride on the victim's authenticated session cookies.

Attack Vector

Exploitation requires an attacker to host a malicious page containing a crafted HTML form or JavaScript that submits a request to the target WordPress site. The victim must be authenticated to WordPress and must visit the attacker-controlled resource. Because the request is issued by the victim's browser, WordPress session cookies are attached automatically, and the plugin processes the request as legitimate administrative input. Refer to the Patchstack CSRF Vulnerability Advisory for advisory details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-49069

Indicators of Compromise

Unexpected changes to Contact Forms by Cimatti configuration, form fields, or notification settings.
WordPress access logs showing POST requests to plugin endpoints with Referer headers pointing to external, untrusted domains.
Administrative actions recorded outside of typical working hours or from unusual client IP addresses.

Detection Strategies

Review WordPress audit logs for state-changing requests to the contact-forms plugin that lack a valid nonce parameter.
Correlate browser referrer data with authenticated administrator sessions to identify cross-origin submissions.
Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule that flags requests to plugin admin endpoints missing the _wpnonce field.

Monitoring Recommendations

Enable a WordPress activity logging plugin to record configuration changes and administrator actions.
Monitor outbound HTTP referrers on administrator workstations for connections to untrusted third-party sites during active WordPress sessions.
Alert on modifications to plugin option rows in the wp_options table when the requesting session lacks expected nonce metadata.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-49069

Immediate Actions Required

Identify all WordPress sites running Contact Forms by Cimatti version 1.9.8 or earlier.
Restrict administrator browsing habits and enforce dedicated browser profiles for WordPress management.
Apply the vendor patch as soon as it becomes available and verify the plugin version post-upgrade.

Patch Information

At the time of publication, the advisory lists all versions up to 1.9.8 as affected. Administrators should consult the Patchstack advisory and the WordPress plugin repository for updated releases that add nonce validation to affected handlers.

Workarounds

Deactivate the Contact Forms by Cimatti plugin until a patched version is installed if the functionality is not business-critical.
Deploy a WAF ruleset that requires a valid _wpnonce parameter on plugin administrative endpoints.
Enforce SameSite=Lax or SameSite=Strict cookies on the WordPress session to reduce cross-origin request risk.
Instruct administrators to log out of WordPress when browsing untrusted sites.

bash

# Configuration example: restrict access to plugin admin endpoints via Apache .htaccess
<FilesMatch "admin-ajax\.php|admin-post\.php">
    SetEnvIf Referer "^https://your-wordpress-site\.example\.com/" trusted_ref
    Require env trusted_ref
</FilesMatch>