CVE-2025-52825: Real Estate Manager CSRF Vulnerability

CVE-2025-52825 Overview

CVE-2025-52825 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability [CWE-352] affecting the Rameez Iqbal Real Estate Manager plugin for WordPress. The flaw exists in all versions up to and including 7.3. Attackers can leverage the missing CSRF protections to trigger privilege escalation actions when an authenticated user visits a malicious page. Successful exploitation grants the attacker elevated rights within the affected WordPress instance, compromising confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the site.

Critical Impact
An unauthenticated attacker can trick an authenticated WordPress user into submitting a forged request that escalates account privileges, leading to full site compromise.

Affected Products

Rameez Iqbal Real Estate Manager plugin for WordPress
All versions from n/a through <= 7.3
WordPress sites with the real-estate-manager plugin installed and active

Discovery Timeline

2025-06-20 - CVE-2025-52825 published to NVD
2026-04-23 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-52825

Vulnerability Analysis

The Real Estate Manager plugin exposes privileged actions without verifying the origin or intent of incoming HTTP requests. Because the plugin does not validate anti-CSRF tokens (WordPress nonces) on sensitive endpoints, an attacker-controlled web page can issue state-changing requests on behalf of an authenticated user. When the targeted user holds administrative or editor capabilities, the forged request executes within their session and modifies account privileges.

The vulnerability requires user interaction, such as visiting an attacker-controlled URL or clicking a crafted link. No prior authentication is required by the attacker, and the attack is delivered over the network. The combined impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability is high because the resulting privilege escalation can lead to arbitrary content modification, user account takeover, and plugin or theme installation.

Root Cause

The root cause is missing or insufficient CSRF protection on privileged plugin actions. WordPress plugins are expected to validate requests using wp_nonce_field() and check_admin_referer() or wp_verify_nonce(). The Real Estate Manager plugin omits this validation on endpoints that perform role or capability modifications, allowing cross-origin requests to succeed.

Attack Vector

An attacker hosts a malicious page that auto-submits a form or issues a fetch request to the vulnerable plugin endpoint on a target WordPress site. When a logged-in administrator visits the page, the browser attaches the WordPress session cookie to the forged request. The plugin processes the request as legitimate and escalates privileges for the attacker-chosen account. See the Patchstack advisory for the Real Estate Manager CSRF vulnerability for additional technical context.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-52825

Indicators of Compromise

Unexpected changes to WordPress user roles or capabilities, particularly new administrator accounts
HTTP POST or GET requests to Real Estate Manager plugin endpoints originating from external Referer headers
WordPress audit log entries showing role changes without corresponding admin console activity
New plugin or theme installations following anomalous administrative actions

Detection Strategies

Inspect WordPress wp_usermeta and wp_users tables for unexplained capability changes
Correlate web server access logs for requests to real-estate-manager endpoints with off-site Referer values
Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule that flags state-changing requests missing valid WordPress nonces
Review plugin activity logs and compare administrative actions against authorized user activity windows

Monitoring Recommendations

Enable a WordPress activity logging plugin to track role and permission changes in real time
Forward WordPress and web server logs to a centralized SIEM for cross-source correlation
Alert on creation of new administrator accounts and unexpected privilege grants
Monitor for outbound requests originating from forged sessions, such as plugin installations from unknown sources

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-52825

Immediate Actions Required

Disable the Real Estate Manager plugin until a patched version is verified and deployed
Audit all WordPress accounts and remove any unauthorized administrator or elevated-role users
Force password resets and invalidate active sessions for all privileged WordPress users
Rotate WordPress secret keys in wp-config.php to invalidate existing authentication cookies

Patch Information

At the time of publication, the advisory lists affected versions through <= 7.3 with no fixed version explicitly confirmed in the NVD record. Administrators should monitor the Patchstack advisory for Real Estate Manager and the official WordPress plugin repository for an updated release that introduces nonce validation on privileged endpoints.

Workarounds

Deploy a WAF ruleset that requires same-origin Referer and Origin headers on plugin admin endpoints
Restrict access to /wp-admin/ and plugin endpoints by IP allowlisting where operationally feasible
Enforce multi-factor authentication for all WordPress accounts with edit or administrative capabilities
Educate administrators to log out of WordPress sessions before browsing untrusted external sites

bash

# Example: temporarily disable the plugin via WP-CLI
wp plugin deactivate real-estate-manager

# Rotate WordPress salts to invalidate existing sessions
wp config shuffle-salts