CVE-2025-5953WP Human Resource Management 2.0.0 - 2.2.17 - Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Employee+) Privilege Escalation via wp_ajax_hrm_insert_employee AJAX Action
- 8.8HighCVSS base score
- 0.44%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 61% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
The WP Human Resource Management plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation due to missing authorization in the ajax_insert_employee() and update_empoyee() functions in versions 2.0.0 through 2.2.17. The AJAX handler reads the client-supplied $_POST['role'] and, after basic cleaning via hrm_clean(), passes it directly to wp_insert_user() and later to $user->set_role() without verifying that the current user is allowed to assign that role. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Employee-level access and above, to elevate their privileges to administrator.
Timeline
ID reserved
By Wordfence
- 25 days later
· 25 days later
Published
- 4 days later
· 4 days later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordfenceCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.44% · top 61% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.8.
Affected products
asaquzzaman · WP Human Resource Management
- affected 2.0.0 – ≤ 2.2.17
References
References5
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/3ba33a18-429f-4a3e-b018-bdfbbe6e8482?source=cve (opens in a new tab)
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/hrm/#developers (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L89 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L543 (opens in a new tab)
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L591 (opens in a new tab)
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2025-19920 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2025-5953)Record last updated .