CVE-2025-14533 is a critical security vulnerability identified in the Advanced Custom Fields: Extended plugin for WordPress, affecting all versions up to and including 0.9.2.1. The vulnerability stems from improper privilege management (CWE-269) in the 'insert_user' function, which fails to restrict the roles that can be assigned during user registration. Specifically, if the 'role' attribute is mapped to a custom field, an unauthenticated attacker can supply the 'administrator' role during registration, thereby escalating their privileges to full administrative access on the WordPress site. This bypasses normal role assignment controls and authentication mechanisms. The vulnerability has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8, reflecting its critical nature with network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), no privileges required (PR:N), no user interaction (UI:N), unchanged scope (S:U), and high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H). Exploitation would allow attackers to fully control the affected WordPress installation, including modifying content, installing backdoors, stealing sensitive data, and disrupting services. Although no known exploits have been observed in the wild yet, the ease of exploitation and potential impact make this a severe threat. The vulnerability is particularly dangerous because WordPress is widely used across Europe for websites and intranets, and the Advanced Custom Fields plugin is popular for customizing WordPress content management. The lack of available patches at the time of disclosure increases the urgency for mitigation.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a significant risk of complete compromise of WordPress sites using the affected plugin. Attackers gaining administrator access can manipulate website content, steal sensitive customer or employee data, deploy malware or ransomware, and disrupt business operations. This can lead to reputational damage, regulatory non-compliance (e.g., GDPR violations due to data breaches), financial losses, and loss of customer trust. Organizations relying on WordPress for e-commerce, public-facing websites, or internal portals are especially vulnerable. The vulnerability’s ease of exploitation without authentication means attackers can target sites indiscriminately, increasing the likelihood of widespread impact across European businesses, government agencies, and non-profits. Additionally, compromised sites can be used as launchpads for further attacks within organizational networks or to distribute malicious content to visitors.

1. Immediately audit WordPress installations to identify usage of the Advanced Custom Fields: Extended plugin, especially versions up to 0.9.2.1. 2. If possible, disable or remove the plugin until a security patch is released. 3. Restrict or remove any custom field mappings that allow user role assignment, particularly the 'role' field, to prevent attackers from specifying roles during registration. 4. Implement web application firewalls (WAFs) with rules to detect and block suspicious registration attempts that include role escalation parameters. 5. Monitor user registration logs for anomalous creation of administrator accounts. 6. Enforce strong access controls and multi-factor authentication on WordPress admin accounts to limit damage if exploitation occurs. 7. Keep WordPress core and all plugins updated regularly and subscribe to security advisories from plugin vendors and WordPress security teams. 8. Prepare incident response plans to quickly remediate compromised sites, including restoring from clean backups and rotating credentials. 9. Consider network segmentation to isolate WordPress servers from critical internal systems to reduce lateral movement risk.