CVE-2025-49388: Miraculous Core Plugin Privilege Escalation

CVE-2025-49388 Overview

CVE-2025-49388 is an Incorrect Privilege Assignment vulnerability (CWE-266) affecting the Miraculous Core Plugin for WordPress, developed by kamleshyadav. This critical security flaw enables attackers to escalate privileges on affected WordPress installations, potentially gaining administrative access to compromised websites.

The vulnerability exists in the plugin's privilege assignment mechanism, where improper validation allows unauthorized users to elevate their permissions beyond intended access levels. Given the network-accessible nature of WordPress sites, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to organizations using the affected plugin versions.

Critical Impact

Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this privilege escalation vulnerability to gain full administrative access to WordPress sites running Miraculous Core Plugin versions through 2.0.7, potentially leading to complete site compromise, data theft, and malware injection.

Affected Products

• Miraculous Core Plugin (WordPress plugin) versions through 2.0.7
• WordPress installations using the affected plugin versions

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-08-28 - CVE-2025-49388 published to NVD
• 2025-08-29 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-49388

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability is classified as CWE-266 (Incorrect Privilege Assignment), indicating that the Miraculous Core Plugin fails to properly restrict privilege assignments within its codebase. The flaw allows attackers to manipulate the privilege assignment process, enabling them to obtain elevated access rights that should be restricted to authorized administrators.

The vulnerability is exploitable remotely over the network without requiring any prior authentication or user interaction. Successful exploitation results in complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected WordPress installation. Attackers can read sensitive data, modify site content, install backdoors, or render the site unavailable.

Root Cause

The root cause of CVE-2025-49388 lies in the Miraculous Core Plugin's failure to properly validate and enforce role-based access controls during privilege assignment operations. The plugin does not adequately verify that requests to modify user privileges originate from authenticated administrative users with appropriate permissions.

This type of vulnerability typically occurs when:

• User role validation is missing or insufficient
• Privilege elevation functions lack proper authorization checks
• The plugin accepts and processes user-controlled input for role assignment without sanitization

Attack Vector

The attack vector for CVE-2025-49388 is network-based, requiring no authentication, no user interaction, and presenting low attack complexity. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by:

1. Identifying a WordPress site running a vulnerable version of Miraculous Core Plugin
2. Crafting malicious requests that target the flawed privilege assignment functionality
3. Submitting these requests to escalate their own account privileges or create new administrative accounts
4. Gaining full administrative access to the WordPress installation

The privilege escalation vulnerability enables attackers to bypass the intended access control mechanisms and obtain administrator-level permissions, effectively taking control of the affected WordPress site. For detailed technical information, see the Patchstack security advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-49388

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected new administrator accounts appearing in WordPress user management
• Unauthorized modifications to user roles or capabilities
• Suspicious plugin activity in WordPress audit logs targeting role assignment functions
• Unexpected API requests or POST data to plugin endpoints related to user management

Detection Strategies

• Monitor WordPress user management for unauthorized privilege changes or new admin accounts
• Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block suspicious requests targeting WordPress plugin endpoints
• Review server access logs for unusual POST requests to the Miraculous Core Plugin's AJAX handlers or REST API endpoints
• Configure real-time alerting for any user role modifications in WordPress

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable detailed audit logging for all WordPress user management operations
• Deploy endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to monitor for post-exploitation activities
• Implement file integrity monitoring to detect unauthorized changes to WordPress core files, themes, and plugins
• Regularly review WordPress user accounts and their assigned roles for anomalies

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-49388

Immediate Actions Required

• Audit all WordPress user accounts for unauthorized privilege escalations or suspicious administrator accounts
• Review site access logs for evidence of exploitation attempts
• Consider temporarily disabling the Miraculous Core Plugin until a patched version is available
• Implement additional access controls at the web server or firewall level to restrict access to sensitive WordPress endpoints

Patch Information

Organizations using the Miraculous Core Plugin should monitor for security updates from the plugin developer. The vulnerability affects all versions from n/a through 2.0.7. Users should update to a patched version as soon as one becomes available.

For the latest information on available patches, consult the Patchstack WordPress vulnerability database.

Workarounds

• Disable the Miraculous Core Plugin temporarily if it is not critical to site functionality
• Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to block unauthorized requests to plugin endpoints
• Restrict administrative access to WordPress by IP address whitelisting at the server level
• Enable WordPress two-factor authentication (2FA) to add an additional layer of protection for administrator accounts

# WordPress .htaccess configuration to restrict wp-admin access by IP
<Files wp-login.php>
  Order Deny,Allow
  Deny from all
  Allow from YOUR.TRUSTED.IP.ADDRESS
</Files>

# Block direct access to plugin files
<FilesMatch "\.php$">
  <If "%{REQUEST_URI} =~ m#/wp-content/plugins/miraculouscore/#">
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
  </If>
</FilesMatch>