Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Soledad Theme Affectin...

[carlospolop]

🤖 Automated Content Update

This PR was automatically generated by the HackTricks News Bot based on a technical blog post.

📝 Source Information

• Blog URL: https://patchstack.com/articles/privilege-escalation-vulnerability-in-soledad-theme-affecting-50k-sites/
• Blog Title: Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Soledad Theme Affecting 50k+ Sites
• Suggested Section: network-services-pentesting/pentesting-web/wordpress (add a subsection on "WordPress AJAX option updaters without capability checks" covering nonce-only protected update_option() handlers and Subscriber→Administrator escalation via users_can_register/default_role)

🎯 Content Summary

The article documents a critical Subscriber+ privilege escalation vulnerability in the commercial WordPress Soledad theme (by PenciDesign), affecting versions ≤ 8.6.9. The issue is tracked as CVE-2025-64188, with a reported impact on ~57,000 sites and a CVSS score of 9.8, and has been patched in version 8.6.9.1.

How the Soledad theme functionality works
Soledad includes a custom AJAX endpoint i...

🔧 Technical Details

Abusing weakly protected WordPress AJAX option updaters for privilege escalation
If a WordPress theme or plugin exposes an authenticated AJAX action that calls update_option() (or similar) based on user-supplied option_name and option_val, and protects it only with a nonce via check_ajax_referer() but no capability check (e.g. current_user_can( 'manage_options' )), any low-privileged backend user who can access /wp-admin and see the nonce can arbitrarily change WordPress options.

The practical attack pattern is:

1. Log in as a low-privileged user (Subscriber or similar) who can reach the admin area.
2. Use browser developer tools to find the nonce used for the AJAX action (e.g. ajax-nonce) in HTML source or AJAX requests.
3. Send crafted POST requests to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action=<vulnerable_acti...

   🤖 Agent Actions

   Summary:

   • Expanded network-services-pentesting/pentesting-web/wordpress.md with a new subsection on “WordPress AJAX option updaters without capability checks,” covering the Soledad theme vulnerability as a generalized technique. Included vulnerable code pattern, a Subscriber→Administrator exploitation chain using crafted admin-ajax.php requests, and a detailed detection/hardening checklist emphasizing capability enforcement around update_option() handlers.
   • Added Patchstack’s Soledad theme advisory to the References section so the new content is properly sourced.

   Testing:

   • Not applicable (documentation updates only).

   ---

   This PR was automatically created by the HackTricks Feed Bot. Please review the changes carefully before merging.

[carlospolop]

🔗 Additional Context

Original Blog Post: https://patchstack.com/articles/privilege-escalation-vulnerability-in-soledad-theme-affecting-50k-sites/

Content Categories: Based on the analysis, this content was categorized under "network-services-pentesting/pentesting-web/wordpress (add a subsection on "WordPress AJAX option updaters without capability checks" covering nonce-only protected update_option() handlers and Subscriber→Administrator escalation via users_can_register/default_role)".

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