CVE-2025-49449: WordPress Africa Map Plugin CSRF Flaw

CVE-2025-49449 Overview

CVE-2025-49449 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability affecting the WP Map Plugins Interactive Regional Map of Africa plugin for WordPress. The flaw impacts all plugin versions up to and including 1.0. An attacker can trick an authenticated user into submitting a forged request that performs unintended actions within the plugin's administrative context. Successful exploitation requires user interaction, typically by luring a logged-in administrator to a malicious page. The issue is tracked under CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery.

Critical Impact

Attackers can force authenticated WordPress administrators to perform unintended state-changing actions through the vulnerable plugin, potentially altering plugin configuration or map data without consent.

Affected Products

• WP Map Plugins Interactive Regional Map of Africa (interactive-map-of-africa)
• All plugin versions from n/a through 1.0
• WordPress sites with the plugin installed and active

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-06-06 - CVE-2025-49449 published to NVD
• 2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-49449

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability stems from missing or improperly implemented anti-CSRF token validation in the Interactive Regional Map of Africa plugin. WordPress provides a nonce mechanism through wp_nonce_field() and check_admin_referer() to protect state-changing requests, but the plugin fails to enforce these checks on one or more sensitive endpoints. An attacker crafts a malicious HTML page containing a form or script that automatically submits a request to the vulnerable endpoint. When an authenticated administrator visits the attacker-controlled page, the browser transmits valid session cookies alongside the forged request. The plugin processes the request as legitimate because it cannot distinguish forged submissions from genuine administrator actions.

Root Cause

The root cause is the absence of CSRF token verification on plugin actions that modify state. Without validating a unique per-session nonce, the plugin trusts any authenticated request originating from the browser regardless of its origin.

Attack Vector

Exploitation requires network access to the target site and user interaction from a privileged user. The attacker delivers a crafted link or embeds an auto-submitting form on a page the victim visits while authenticated to WordPress. No exploit code has been published, and the flaw is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. See the Patchstack advisory for technical details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-49449

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected changes to Interactive Regional Map of Africa plugin settings or map data
• Web server access logs showing POST requests to plugin endpoints with Referer headers pointing to external, unrelated domains
• Administrator sessions performing plugin actions immediately after visiting untrusted external URLs

Detection Strategies

• Inspect WordPress audit logs for plugin configuration changes that do not correlate with legitimate administrator activity
• Correlate browser history or proxy logs for administrators against timestamps of plugin state changes
• Deploy a web application firewall (WAF) rule to alert on POST requests to the plugin lacking a valid same-origin Referer or Origin header

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable a WordPress activity logging plugin to record all administrative actions with source IP and referer
• Forward WordPress and web server logs to a central SIEM for cross-source correlation and long-term retention
• Alert on anomalous administrator behavior such as rapid configuration changes following external site visits

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-49449

Immediate Actions Required

• Deactivate and remove the Interactive Regional Map of Africa plugin until a patched version is released
• Restrict WordPress administrator accounts from browsing untrusted sites in the same session used for site administration
• Enforce strong session controls and require re-authentication for privileged operations

Patch Information

At the time of publication, no fixed version has been listed for the Interactive Regional Map of Africa plugin. Administrators should monitor the Patchstack advisory and the plugin's official WordPress.org page for updates. Apply any vendor-supplied patch immediately upon release.

Workarounds

• Remove or disable the plugin on production sites until a patched release is available
• Deploy a WAF rule that requires a same-origin Referer or Origin header for all POST requests to /wp-admin/ endpoints associated with the plugin
• Limit administrative access to trusted IP ranges using web server or reverse-proxy access control lists
• Use browser isolation or a dedicated administrative browser profile to reduce the likelihood of cross-site request execution

# Example nginx rule to block cross-origin POSTs to the plugin admin endpoint
location ~ ^/wp-admin/admin\.php$ {
    if ($request_method = POST) {
        set $csrf_block "0";
        if ($http_origin !~* "^https?://your-site\.example$") {
            set $csrf_block "1";
        }
        if ($csrf_block = "1") {
            return 403;
        }
    }
}