CVE-2025-5190: Browse As <= 0.2 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Authentication Bypass via Cookie

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-05-30 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-288

Description

The Browse As plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to authentication bypass in versions up to, and including, 0.2. This is due to incorrect authentication checking in the 'IS_BA_Browse_As::notice' function with the 'is_ba_original_user_COOKIEHASH' cookie value. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level permissions and above, to log in as any existing user on the site, such as an administrator, if they have access to the user id.

Affected products

sorich87 Browse As: through 0.2

References

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/browse-as/tags/0.2/browse-as.php#L115
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/browse-as/tags/0.2/browse-as.php#L92
https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/8f5722b0-0d54-4c44-b168-a886da1077cb?source=cve

Get alerted when CVE-2025-5190 or the next vulnerability affects your stack