CVE-2025-10423 is a medium-severity vulnerability identified in version 1.0 of newbee-mall, an e-commerce platform. The vulnerability resides in the mallKaptcha function located in the /common/mall/kaptcha file. This function is responsible for generating CAPTCHA challenges intended to prevent automated abuse such as bot-driven account creation or login attempts. The flaw allows attackers to guess CAPTCHA values due to insufficient randomness or predictability in the CAPTCHA generation mechanism. Although the attack can be executed remotely without authentication or user interaction, the complexity of successfully exploiting this vulnerability is high, making exploitation difficult. The vulnerability does not impact confidentiality, integrity, or availability directly but undermines the CAPTCHA's effectiveness as a security control, potentially enabling automated attacks like credential stuffing, brute force login attempts, or spam submissions. The CVSS 4.0 score of 6.3 reflects a medium severity, with network attack vector, high attack complexity, no privileges or user interaction required, and low impact on confidentiality. No known exploits are currently observed in the wild, but proof-of-concept exploit code has been publicly disclosed, increasing the risk of future exploitation. No official patches or mitigations have been linked yet, so affected users must rely on interim controls or updates from the vendor.

For European organizations using newbee-mall version 1.0, this vulnerability could weaken the CAPTCHA protection mechanism, increasing the risk of automated attacks such as credential stuffing, brute force login attempts, or fraudulent transactions. While the vulnerability itself does not directly compromise sensitive data or system integrity, successful exploitation could lead to unauthorized access or abuse of user accounts, impacting user trust and potentially leading to financial losses or regulatory scrutiny under GDPR if personal data is compromised. E-commerce platforms are critical for business continuity and customer engagement; thus, any weakening of security controls can have reputational and operational impacts. Organizations relying on newbee-mall should be aware that attackers might leverage this vulnerability as part of a multi-stage attack chain, especially targeting accounts with weak passwords or reused credentials. The medium severity and high complexity of exploitation suggest that only skilled attackers are likely to succeed, but the public availability of exploit details increases the risk over time.

1. Immediate mitigation should include implementing additional rate limiting and anomaly detection on login and account creation endpoints to detect and block automated abuse attempts that bypass CAPTCHA. 2. Organizations should consider deploying alternative CAPTCHA solutions or multi-factor authentication (MFA) to strengthen authentication flows until an official patch is released. 3. Monitor vendor communications closely for patches or updates addressing this vulnerability and apply them promptly. 4. Review and enhance password policies to enforce strong, unique passwords, reducing the impact of automated credential stuffing. 5. Implement web application firewalls (WAFs) with rules designed to detect and block suspicious traffic patterns indicative of automated attacks. 6. Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing focusing on authentication and anti-automation controls to identify residual weaknesses. 7. Educate users about phishing and credential reuse risks to minimize the effectiveness of automated attacks that exploit weak credentials.