Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)Weakness · CWE-352

CVE-2025-23989

HIGH · 7.1 CVSS v3.1 Published 2025-01-31
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
78/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Alessandro Piconi Internal Link Builder internal-link-builder allows Cross Site Request Forgery.This issue affects Internal Link Builder: from n/a through <= 1.0.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · moderate confidence

CSRF vulnerability in the Internal Link Builder plugin allows attackers to forge authenticated requests by tricking logged-in administrators into visiting malicious pages. The lack of anti-CSRF tokens on state-changing operations enables unauthorized modification of internal links.

MitigationImplement anti-CSRF tokens (synchronizer token pattern) on all POST/PUT/DELETE endpoints and validate Origin/Referer headers to prevent cross-origin forged requests.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
Low

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Locate the Internal Link Builder plugin files
    Access your site's wp-content/plugins directory and identify the Internal Link Builder plugin folder (often named 'internal-link-builder' or similar)
    Affected if The plugin folder exists and contains PHP files handling form submissions or AJAX requests
  2. Inspect form handlers for nonce verification
    Open the main plugin PHP files and search for 'wp_nonce_field', 'wp_verify_nonce', 'check_admin_referer', or 'check_ajax_referer' functions in files handling state-changing operations (form submissions, settings saves, link modifications)
    Affected if No nonce verification is found in files that handle POST/DELETE requests modifying link data
  3. Check AJAX endpoints for CSRF protection
    Search for 'add_action' hooks registering AJAX actions (wp_ajax_*) and verify each handler calls nonce verification functions before processing requests
    Affected if AJAX handlers exist but do not verify nonces before executing state-changing operations
  4. Verify Origin/Referer header validation
    Search plugin code for '$_SERVER[HTTP_ORIGIN]' or '$_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]' validation, or check if WordPress's 'check_admin_referer' is used which includes this check
    Affected if No origin or referer header validation is performed on POST requests
  5. Identify state-changing operations lacking protection
    Review code for form actions, database write operations (insert, update, delete on links table), or settings changes that process without nonce validation
    Affected if Any link creation, modification, deletion, or bulk operations process requests without anti-CSRF token validation

Your environment is affected if the Internal Link Builder plugin is installed and its state-changing operations (link creation, modification, deletion) process requests without verifying anti-CSRF tokens (nonces) or validating Origin/Referer headers.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Implement anti-CSRF tokens (synchronizer token pattern) on all POST/PUT/DELETE endpoints and validate Origin/Referer headers to prevent cross-origin forged requests.

Have this fixed Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation4.0 h
  • Testing2.0 h
  • Review / QA1.0 h
9.0 hours of engineering $1,600
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Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-23989 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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