CVE-2025-48108

Executive Summary

CVE-2025-48108 is a Missing Authorization vulnerability in the Mojoomla School Management plugin for WordPress. This flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to exploit incorrectly configured access control security levels, potentially leading to unauthorized data access or modification. The vulnerability affects all versions from n/a through 93.2.0. With a CVSS score of 6.5 (Medium), it poses a significant risk to WordPress sites using this plugin, especially given the lack of a confirmed patch. The EPSS score of 0.0% indicates low exploitation likelihood currently, but the absence of a patch makes it a ticking time bomb for unmaintained installations.

Supply Chain & Package Security

This vulnerability resides in a WordPress plugin distributed via the official WordPress plugin repository and third-party marketplaces. The lack of a patch from the vendor (Mojoomla) means that sites relying on automatic updates remain exposed. Organizations should treat this as a supply chain risk, as the plugin may be bundled in managed WordPress hosting environments or custom themes.

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: 6.5 (Medium)
• Attack Vector: Network (AV:N) – exploitable remotely.
• Attack Complexity: Low (AC:L) – no special conditions required.
• Privileges Required: None (PR:N) – unauthenticated exploitation.
• User Interaction: None (UI:N) – no user action needed.
• Scope: Unchanged (S:U) – vulnerability does not affect other components.
• Confidentiality Impact: Low (C:L) – limited data exposure.
• Integrity Impact: Low (I:L) – limited data modification.
• Availability Impact: None (A:N) – no denial of service.

Threat Level: Medium. The vulnerability is easy to exploit but has limited impact. However, in the context of a school management system, even low-impact data leaks (e.g., student records, grades) can have serious privacy implications.

Deep Dive & Mechanics

The vulnerability stems from missing authorization checks in the plugin’s REST API endpoints or AJAX handlers. The plugin likely exposes functions for managing school data (e.g., student profiles, attendance, grades) without verifying that the requesting user has appropriate permissions. An unauthenticated attacker can send crafted HTTP requests to these endpoints to:

• Retrieve sensitive data (e.g., student personal information, teacher credentials).
• Modify records (e.g., change grades, alter attendance logs).
• Bypass intended access controls.

The core issue is a CWE-862: Missing Authorization, meaning the plugin fails to enforce role-based access control (RBAC) on critical operations. This is common in WordPress plugins where developers assume that only authenticated users will call certain functions, but neglect to add current_user_can() checks.

Vulnerable vs. Patched Code

Since no patch is available, we can only hypothesize the vulnerable code pattern. A typical vulnerable snippet might look like:

// Vulnerable: No capability check
add_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_school_get_student', 'school_get_student');
function school_get_student() {
    $student_id = $_GET['id'];
    global $wpdb;
    $result = $wpdb->get_row("SELECT * FROM students WHERE id = $student_id");
    echo json_encode($result);
    wp_die();
}

A patched version would include:

// Patched: Check user capability
add_action('wp_ajax_school_get_student', 'school_get_student');
add_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_school_get_student', 'school_get_student');
function school_get_student() {
    if (!current_user_can('edit_posts')) {
        wp_die('Unauthorized', 403);
    }
    $student_id = intval($_GET['id']);
    global $wpdb;
    $result = $wpdb->get_row($wpdb->prepare("SELECT * FROM students WHERE id = %d", $student_id));
    echo json_encode($result);
    wp_die();
}

The key differences:

1. The patched version uses current_user_can() to verify the user has at least edit_posts capability.
2. It uses wp_ajax_ (authenticated) instead of wp_ajax_nopriv_ (unauthenticated) for sensitive actions.
3. Input sanitization with intval() and prepared statements to prevent SQL injection.

Exploitation & Lab Setup

Red Team (Exploitation)

Prerequisites:

• Target WordPress site with School Management plugin <= 93.2.0.
• No authentication required.

Exploitation Steps:

1. Identify vulnerable endpoints: Use a tool like Burp Suite or curl to enumerate AJAX actions. Common patterns include:

   • wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=school_get_student&id=1
   • wp-json/school/v1/students

2. Craft exploit request:

   curl -X GET "http://target.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=school_get_student&id=1" -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0"
   

3. Extract data: If successful, the response will contain student data in JSON format.

4. Modify data (if writable endpoint exists):

   curl -X POST "http://target.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=school_update_grade" -d "student_id=1&grade=A"
   

Automated exploitation with Nuclei (if template were available):

id: CVE-2025-48108
info:
  name: Mojoomla School Management - Missing Authorization
  severity: medium
  description: ...
requests:
  - method: GET
    path:
      - "{{BaseURL}}/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=school_get_student&id=1"
    matchers:
      - type: word
        words:
          - "student_name"
          - "grade"

Blue Team (Detection & Hardening)

Detection:

• Monitor for unusual AJAX requests to admin-ajax.php with action parameters related to school management.
• Look for requests from unauthenticated users (no Cookie header with WordPress auth cookies).
• Alert on repeated access to endpoints like school_get_student, school_update_grade, etc.

Hardening:

1. Immediate: Disable the plugin if not critical.
2. Temporary: Add a Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule to block unauthenticated access to known vulnerable endpoints.
3. Code fix: Add current_user_can() checks to all AJAX handlers (see patched code above).
4. Network: Restrict access to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php via .htaccess or Nginx rules for non-admin IPs.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

• Network IOCs:
  • HTTP requests to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action=school_* parameters from unauthenticated sources.
  • Unusual JSON responses containing student data (e.g., student_name, grade, class).
• File IOCs:
  • Modified plugin files in /wp-content/plugins/school-management/ (if attacker uploads webshell).
  • Suspicious log entries in WordPress debug log (wp-content/debug.log).
• Behavioral IOCs:
  • Sudden changes to student records or grades without corresponding admin activity.
  • Multiple failed login attempts from the same IP (if attacker tries to escalate privileges).

Detection Engineering

YARA Rule

rule CVE_2025_48108_Mojoomla_School_Management {
    meta:
        description = "Detects exploitation attempts for CVE-2025-48108 in Mojoomla School Management plugin"
        author = "Valters IT"
        date = "2025-04-10"
        reference = "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-48108"
    strings:
        $ajax_action = /admin-ajax\.php\?action=school_[a-z_]+/ nocase
        $student_data = /"student_name"|"grade"|"class_id"/ nocase
    condition:
        $ajax_action and #student_data > 2
}

Sigma Rule

title: CVE-2025-48108 - Mojoomla School Management Missing Authorization
id: 8a4b3c2d-1e5f-4a7b-9c8d-0e1f2a3b4c5d
status: experimental
description: Detects unauthenticated access to School Management plugin AJAX endpoints
author: Valters IT
date: 2025/04/10
logsource:
    category: webserver
    product: apache
    service: access_combined
detection:
    selection:
        cs-method: 'GET'
        cs-uri-query|contains: 'action=school_'
        sc-status: 200
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate admin activity (rare)
level: medium

Suricata Rule

alert http any any -> any any (msg:"CVE-2025-48108 Mojoomla School Management Missing Authorization"; flow:to_server; content:"/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php"; http_uri; content:"action=school_"; http_uri; nocase; classtype:attempted-recon; sid:1000001; rev:1;)

Remediation & Mitigation

Immediate Actions:

1. Disable the plugin until a patch is available.
2. Apply virtual patching via WAF (e.g., Cloudflare, ModSecurity) to block unauthenticated requests to admin-ajax.php with action=school_*.
3. Audit user accounts for any unauthorized changes.

Long-term Fix:

• Vendor patch: Monitor Mojoomla’s website or WordPress plugin repository for an update.
• Custom fix: If you have developer resources, apply the code changes shown in the "Vulnerable vs. Patched Code" section.
• Replace plugin: Consider migrating to an alternative school management plugin with active security support.

Detection Tuning:

• Enable WordPress debug logging temporarily to capture exploitation attempts.
• Review server access logs for patterns matching the Sigma rule above.

Valters IT
Securing WordPress ecosystems through proactive threat intelligence.