dbcve.org
Incorrect Privilege AssignmentWeakness · CWE-266

CVE-2025-54697

HIGH · 7.2 CVSS v3.1 Published 2025-08-14
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 Zero-click

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
Incorrect Privilege Assignment vulnerability in StellarWP Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer kadence-woocommerce-email-designer allows Privilege Escalation.This issue affects Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer: from n/a through <= 1.5.16.

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

The Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer plugin versions through 1.5.16 contains an Incorrect Privilege Assignment vulnerability allowing authenticated users to escalate their privileges beyond what they should normally have. This privilege escalation flaw could permit a lower-privileged user to perform administrative actions they are not authorized to perform.

MitigationUpdate the Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer plugin to a version higher than 1.5.16 to remediate this privilege escalation vulnerability.

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
High
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/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 checks

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

  1. Verify Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer plugin is installed
    Navigate to WordPress admin > Plugins and locate 'Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer' in the list of installed plugins
    Affected if The plugin appears in the installed plugins list
  2. Determine the installed plugin version
    Click on the plugin in the WordPress plugins list or check the plugin header in /wp-content/plugins/kadence-woocommerce-email-designer/ folder for the version number
    Affected if The version shown is 1.5.16 or any earlier version (e.g., 1.5.15, 1.5.0, 1.0.0)
  3. Check for existing administrator accounts created by lower-privileged users
    Review WordPress user roles and capabilities in Users > All Users, looking for unexpected administrator accounts or users with administrator-level access that were created by users who originally had lower privileges
    Affected if Administrator accounts exist that were created by users who should not have had permission to create admin-level accounts

If the Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer plugin is installed and its version is 1.5.16 or earlier, the environment is affected by this privilege escalation vulnerability.

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

Update the Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer plugin to a version higher than 1.5.16 to remediate this privilege escalation vulnerability.

Have this fixed Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation2.0 h
  • Testing3.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
9.0 hours of engineering $1,570
Get help mitigating

An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $2,512.

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-54697 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

Get it on GitHub Scan in the browser

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-2025-54697 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

Be the first to add a field note for this CVE — a mitigation you’ve verified, a version caveat, or a link to a working fix. Sign in above to contribute.

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
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data