CVE-2025-5948
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 · uneditedThe Service Finder Bookings plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation via account takeover in all versions up to, and including, 6.0. This is due to the plugin not properly validating a user's identity prior to claiming a business when using the claim_business AJAX action. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to login as any user including admins. Please note that subscriber privileges or brute-forcing are needed when completing the business takeover. The claim_id is needed to takeover the admin account, but brute-forcing is a practical approach to obtaining valid IDs.
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 · high confidenceThe Service Finder Bookings WordPress plugin fails to validate user identity before processing the claim_business AJAX action. This allows unauthenticated attackers to claim any business by supplying a valid claim_id, enabling privilege escalation to admin access through brute-forcing of claim IDs.
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
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/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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Identify Service Finder Bookings plugin installationIn WordPress admin, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins and locate 'Service Finder Bookings' or check wp-content/plugins/ directory for the service-finder-bookings folder. Note the version number displayed.Affected if Plugin is installed and version is below 6.1 or version cannot be determined
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Verify AJAX endpoint exposureSend a direct HTTP request to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action=claim_business and a sample claim_id parameter, without authentication. Check if the server responds (rather than returning a login redirect or auth error).Affected if The endpoint returns any response without requiring authentication (status 200 with JSON output)
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Inspect for unauthorized admin accountsNavigate to Users > All Users in WordPress admin and review the list of administrator accounts. Check for newly created accounts with unfamiliar usernames, especially those created recently or without matching user registration logs.Affected if Unexpected admin accounts exist that were not created by legitimate administrators
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Review business claim recordsQuery the wp_postmeta or custom plugin tables for post_type 'sf-business' or similar, checking meta fields related to 'claimed_by' or 'claim_status'. Look for claim records with unexpected user IDs or recent timestamps.Affected if Claim records exist with user IDs that do not correspond to known legitimate users or claim IDs were modified unexpectedly
You are affected if the Service Finder Bookings plugin is installed with a version below 6.1 and the claim_business AJAX action is accessible without authentication, or if unauthorized admin accounts or claim modifications are found in the system.
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 dataUpdate the Service Finder Bookings plugin to version 6.1 or later which includes proper identity validation for the claim_business AJAX action. Until patched, monitor for unauthorized admin account creation.
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing4.0 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 $3,328.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-5948 — 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-2025-5948 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
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data