CVE-2025-30964

Executive Summary

CVE-2025-30964 is a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in the WordPress ecosystem, specifically within the ThemeGoods Photography theme (versions before 7.7.6). This flaw allows an unauthenticated attacker to induce the server to make arbitrary HTTP requests to internal or external resources, potentially leading to information disclosure, internal network scanning, or further exploitation. The vulnerability is classified as medium severity (CVSS 5.4) and currently has no known public exploit or patch. The EPSS score is 0.0%, indicating low exploitation likelihood at this time, but the risk remains for exposed WordPress installations.

Supply Chain & Package Security

This vulnerability affects a WordPress theme distributed via ThemeGoods. Since it is a commercial theme, no public patch or advisory is available from OSV or GitHub. Users must rely on vendor updates or manual mitigation. The theme is not an NPM, PyPI, Go, or Ruby package, but it is part of the WordPress plugin/theme ecosystem, which is a common attack vector for supply chain compromises.

CVSS Breakdown & Threat Level

• CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
• Base Score: 5.4 (Medium)
• Attack Vector: Network (AV:N) – Exploitable remotely.
• Attack Complexity: Low (AC:L) – No special conditions required.
• Privileges Required: None (PR:N) – Unauthenticated.
• User Interaction: None (UI:N) – No user action needed.
• Scope: Unchanged (S:U) – Affects only the vulnerable component.
• Confidentiality Impact: Low (C:L) – Limited information disclosure.
• Integrity Impact: Low (I:L) – Limited ability to modify data.
• Availability Impact: None (A:N) – No denial of service.

Threat Level: Medium. While the CVSS score is moderate, SSRF can be chained with other vulnerabilities (e.g., cloud metadata access) to escalate impact.

Deep Dive & Mechanics

The vulnerability resides in the ThemeGoods Photography theme for WordPress. The theme likely includes a feature that fetches external resources (e.g., images, feeds, or API data) based on user-supplied URLs without proper validation. An attacker can craft a request to the vulnerable endpoint, specifying a URL pointing to internal services (e.g., http://169.254.169.254/ for cloud metadata, http://localhost/ for local services, or internal network hosts).

Attack Flow:

1. Identify the vulnerable endpoint (e.g., /wp-content/themes/photography/ajax.php?action=fetch&url=...).
2. Send a GET/POST request with a malicious URL.
3. The server fetches the URL and returns the response (or performs actions based on it).
4. Attacker extracts sensitive data or maps internal infrastructure.

Root Cause: Lack of input validation and URL whitelisting in the theme’s server-side request handling.

Vulnerable vs. Patched Code

Since no patch is publicly available, the following is a hypothetical comparison based on common SSRF fixes.

Vulnerable Code (PHP):

$url = $_GET['url'];
$response = file_get_contents($url);
echo $response;

Patched Code (Hypothetical):

$url = $_GET['url'];
$allowed_hosts = ['api.example.com', 'cdn.example.com'];
$parsed_url = parse_url($url);
if (!in_array($parsed_url['host'], $allowed_hosts)) {
    die('Invalid URL');
}
$response = file_get_contents($url);
echo $response;

Key Differences:

• Input validation: Patched version checks the host against a whitelist.
• URL parsing: Patched version uses parse_url() to extract components.
• Error handling: Patched version rejects unauthorized URLs.

Exploitation & Lab Setup

Red Team (Exploitation)

Prerequisites:

• A WordPress site running ThemeGoods Photography < 7.7.6.
• Knowledge of the vulnerable endpoint (e.g., via source code review or fuzzing).

Exploit Steps:

1. Identify the vulnerable endpoint (e.g., /wp-content/themes/photography/includes/ajax.php?action=fetch).
2. Craft a request to fetch internal metadata:

   curl "http://target.com/wp-content/themes/photography/includes/ajax.php?action=fetch&url=http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/"
   

3. If successful, the response will contain cloud instance metadata (e.g., IAM credentials).
4. For internal network scanning, use:

   curl "http://target.com/wp-content/themes/photography/includes/ajax.php?action=fetch&url=http://192.168.1.1:80/"
   

No public exploit code is available for this CVE.

Blue Team (Defense & Detection)

Detection:

• Monitor web server logs for requests to the vulnerable endpoint with suspicious url parameters (e.g., 169.254.169.254, localhost, 127.0.0.1).
• Use WAF rules to block requests containing internal IP addresses or cloud metadata URLs.
• Implement network segmentation to limit outbound traffic from web servers.

Mitigation:

• Disable the vulnerable feature if not needed.
• Apply input validation and URL whitelisting.
• Use a proxy or firewall to restrict outbound requests.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

Network IOCs:

• Outbound HTTP requests to internal IPs (e.g., 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, 169.254.169.254).
• Requests to localhost, 127.0.0.1, 0.0.0.0.
• Unusual url parameters in GET/POST requests to the theme’s AJAX endpoints.

File IOCs:

• Log entries containing action=fetch and url= with internal addresses.
• Temporary files created by the server during request processing (e.g., /tmp/phpXXXXXX).

Behavioral IOCs:

• Unexpected outbound connections from the web server to internal services.
• Increased latency or errors due to internal network scanning.

Detection Engineering

YARA Rule

rule CVE_2025_30964_SSRF_Photography {
    meta:
        description = "Detects SSRF exploitation attempts against ThemeGoods Photography theme"
        author = "Valters IT"
        date = "2025-04-10"
        cve = "CVE-2025-30964"
    strings:
        $url_param = "url=" nocase
        $internal_ip = /(169\.254\.169\.254|127\.0\.0\.1|localhost|10\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}|172\.(1[6-9]|2[0-9]|3[01])\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}|192\.168\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})/ nocase
        $ajax_endpoint = "ajax.php" nocase
        $action_fetch = "action=fetch" nocase
    condition:
        all of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: CVE-2025-30964 SSRF Exploitation Attempt
id: 8a9b7c6d-5e4f-3a2b-1c0d-9e8f7a6b5c4d
status: experimental
description: Detects SSRF attempts against ThemeGoods Photography theme
author: Valters IT
date: 2025-04-10
logsource:
    category: webserver
    product: apache
    service: access
detection:
    selection:
        cs-method: 'GET'
        cs-uri-query|contains:
            - 'ajax.php'
            - 'action=fetch'
            - 'url='
        cs-uri-query|re: '(169\.254\.169\.254|127\.0\.0\.1|localhost|10\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}|172\.(1[6-9]|2[0-9]|3[01])\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}|192\.168\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate use of internal URLs by administrators
level: high

Suricata Rule

alert http $HOME_NET any -> $EXTERNAL_NET any (msg:"CVE-2025-30964 SSRF Exploitation Attempt"; flow:to_server,established; content:"GET"; http_method; content:"ajax.php"; http_uri; content:"action=fetch"; http_uri; content:"url="; http_uri; pcre:"/(169\.254\.169\.254|127\.0\.0\.1|localhost|10\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}|172\.(1[6-9]|2[0-9]|3[01])\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}|192\.168\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})/Ri"; classtype:attempted-recon; sid:1000001; rev:1;)

Remediation & Mitigation

Immediate Actions:

1. Update the theme to version 7.7.6 or later if a patch becomes available.
2. Disable the vulnerable feature by removing or commenting out the AJAX handler in the theme files.
3. Apply a WAF rule to block requests containing internal IP addresses or cloud metadata URLs.
4. Restrict outbound traffic from the web server using firewall rules (e.g., allow only necessary external IPs/domains).

Long-term Measures:

• Implement input validation and URL whitelisting in all custom code.
• Use a proxy or API gateway to control outbound requests.
• Regularly audit WordPress themes and plugins for vulnerabilities.
• Monitor logs for SSRF attempts and respond promptly.

Valters IT – Securing digital frontiers, one CVE at a time.