CVE-2025-58844 Overview
CVE-2025-58844 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Subhash Kumar Database to Excel WordPress plugin (database-to-excel). The flaw affects all plugin versions up to and including 1.0. An attacker can exploit the missing CSRF protection to deliver a Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) payload when an authenticated administrator is tricked into visiting a crafted page. Once stored, the script executes in the context of any user viewing the affected admin interface. The weakness is classified under CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery.
Critical Impact
Successful exploitation enables persistent script injection into the WordPress administrative interface, leading to session theft, account takeover, or further malware delivery to site visitors.
Affected Products
- Subhash Kumar Database to Excel (database-to-excel) WordPress plugin
- All versions from initial release through 1.0
- WordPress sites where an administrator can be socially engineered into clicking an attacker-controlled link
Discovery Timeline
- 2025-09-05 - CVE-2025-58844 published to NVD
- 2026-04-23 - Last updated in NVD database
Technical Details for CVE-2025-58844
Vulnerability Analysis
The plugin exposes state-changing administrative actions without validating an anti-CSRF token. WordPress provides the wp_nonce_field() and check_admin_referer() primitives for this purpose, but the affected endpoints do not enforce them. An unauthenticated attacker can forge a request that, when triggered by an authenticated administrator, writes attacker-controlled content into plugin-managed data. Because the stored content is later rendered without sufficient output encoding, the request also produces a Stored XSS condition. The combined CSRF-to-Stored-XSS chain allows persistent JavaScript execution in the administrator's browser session.
Root Cause
The root cause is missing CSRF token verification on form submission or AJAX handlers within the plugin, combined with insufficient sanitization of user-supplied input on storage and insufficient escaping on output. Either control would have broken the exploit chain.
Attack Vector
Exploitation requires network access to the target site and user interaction from a logged-in privileged user. The attacker hosts a malicious page containing an auto-submitting form or image tag targeting the vulnerable plugin endpoint. When the administrator visits the page, the browser issues an authenticated cross-origin request that stores the XSS payload. Subsequent visits to the rendering admin view execute the injected script in the administrator's session context. Refer to the Patchstack Vulnerability Report for additional advisory details.
Detection Methods for CVE-2025-58844
Indicators of Compromise
- Unexpected <script>, <iframe>, or event-handler attributes (onerror, onload) stored in plugin configuration tables or options.
- HTTP POST requests to plugin endpoints whose Referer header points to an external, untrusted domain.
- Administrator browser sessions issuing outbound requests to unknown hosts shortly after visiting third-party links.
Detection Strategies
- Review WordPress wp_options and any plugin-specific tables for HTML or JavaScript content that should not contain markup.
- Inspect web server access logs for state-changing requests to database-to-excel endpoints missing a valid _wpnonce parameter.
- Audit admin user activity for unexplained configuration changes or new administrator accounts created via the plugin context.
Monitoring Recommendations
- Enable WordPress audit logging to capture option changes, user creation, and plugin setting modifications.
- Forward web server and WordPress audit logs to a centralized analytics platform for correlation across requests, sessions, and outbound traffic.
- Alert on administrator browsers loading remote scripts from domains not on an approved allowlist.
How to Mitigate CVE-2025-58844
Immediate Actions Required
- Deactivate and remove the database-to-excel plugin until a patched version is available, as the latest published release (1.0) remains vulnerable.
- Rotate administrator credentials and invalidate active WordPress sessions to revoke any tokens that may have been stolen.
- Inspect plugin-managed data and the WordPress database for injected script content and remove it.
Patch Information
At the time of NVD publication, no fixed version of the database-to-excel plugin is listed. Monitor the Patchstack advisory and the WordPress plugin repository for an updated release that adds nonce verification and output escaping.
Workarounds
- Restrict access to /wp-admin/ by source IP using web server rules or a Web Application Firewall (WAF).
- Deploy a WAF rule that blocks cross-origin POST requests to plugin endpoints lacking a valid WordPress nonce.
- Enforce SameSite=Lax or Strict cookies on the WordPress session cookie to limit cross-site request delivery.
- Train administrators to log out of WordPress before browsing untrusted links.
# Disable the vulnerable plugin via WP-CLI until a fix is published
wp plugin deactivate database-to-excel
wp plugin delete database-to-excel
Disclaimer: This content was generated using AI. While we strive for accuracy, please verify critical information with official sources.
