What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-8999: Sydney <= 2.56 - Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Subscriber+) Limited Theme Options Update

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.3 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2025-09-17 · updated 2026-09-26
• Weakness: CWE-862

Description

The Sydney theme for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized modification of data due to a missing capability check on the 'activate_modules' function in all versions up to, and including, 2.56. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to activate or deactivate various theme modules.

Affected products

• athemes Sydney: through 2.56

References

• https://research.cleantalk.org/cve-2025-8999/
• https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sydney/2.55/inc/classes/class-sydney-modules.php#L166
• https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sydney/2.55/inc/modules/class-sydney-modules.php#L72
• https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/288374/
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/965582c6-a52e-4f88-81ef-b5dd761a0c23?source=cve

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