CVE-2025-53583
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 · uneditedDeserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in emarket-design Employee Spotlight employee-spotlight allows Object Injection.This issue affects Employee Spotlight: from n/a through <= 5.1.1.
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 confidenceA deserialization vulnerability in emarket-design's Employee Spotlight plugin (versions up to 5.1.1) allows unauthenticated attackers to inject malicious PHP objects by supplying crafted serialized data, potentially achieving remote code execution.
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
- High
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
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 checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Locate the Employee Spotlight plugin installationSearch the web root for files named 'employee-spotlight', 'employee_spotlight', or check the plugins directory (commonly /wp-content/plugins/ for WordPress or similar in other CMS) for the Employee Spotlight plugin folderAffected if The plugin folder exists in the system
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Identify the installed plugin versionOpen the main plugin file (usually contains plugin header comments) or a dedicated readme.txt/changelog file and locate the version number declared in the plugin metadataAffected if The version is 5.1.1 or any version below 5.1.1 (the vulnerability affects versions up to 5.1.1)
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Find deserialization functions in the plugin codeSearch the plugin directory for PHP files containing 'unserialize(' - use grep or a text search for the string 'unserialize' across all .php files in the plugin folderAffected if Any PHP file in the plugin contains an unserialize() call that processes user-supplied input without validation
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Determine if the vulnerable code is reachable without authenticationExamine the code containing unserialize() calls to check if it is hooked to a WordPress action/filter accessible to unauthenticated users (such as init, wp_ajax_nopriv, REST API endpoints, or front-end request handlers)Affected if The unserialize() call executes within a function accessible to unauthenticated (non-logged-in) users
Your environment is affected if the Employee Spotlight plugin is installed at version 5.1.1 or below and contains unsafe unserialize() calls that can be triggered by unauthenticated users.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
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 dataUpgrade to a patched version of Employee Spotlight; if no patch exists, audit code for unsafe unserialize() calls and replace with json_decode or implement strict allowlist validation for any deserialized data.
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation6.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $3,984.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-53583 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-53583 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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