CVE-2025-29004 is a vulnerability classified under CWE-266 (Incorrect Privilege Assignment) affecting AA-Team's Premium Age Verification / Restriction and Responsive Coming Soon Landing Page plugins for WordPress. The issue arises because the plugins improperly assign privileges, enabling users with limited permissions to escalate their privileges to higher levels without requiring user interaction. This flaw impacts Premium Age Verification / Restriction versions up to 3.0.2 and Responsive Coming Soon Landing Page versions up to 3.0. The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.8, reflecting its critical nature with network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), unchanged scope (S:U), and high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H). Exploitation could allow an attacker to gain administrative control over the affected WordPress site, potentially leading to data breaches, site defacement, or further malware deployment. Although no known exploits are currently in the wild, the vulnerability's characteristics make it a prime target for attackers. The plugins are commonly used to enforce age restrictions or display coming soon pages, often on sites requiring compliance with legal age verification or marketing landing pages. The improper privilege assignment likely stems from flawed role or capability checks within the plugin code, allowing privilege escalation from subscriber or contributor roles to administrator or equivalent. This vulnerability underscores the importance of secure privilege management in WordPress plugins, especially those handling access control.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a significant risk, particularly for those operating websites with age-restricted content, e-commerce platforms, or marketing landing pages using the affected AA-Team plugins. Exploitation could lead to unauthorized administrative access, resulting in data theft, defacement, or disruption of services. This could compromise personal data protected under GDPR, leading to regulatory fines and reputational damage. The high CVSS score indicates that confidentiality, integrity, and availability of affected systems can be severely impacted. Organizations in sectors such as online retail, gaming, adult content, and regulated industries that rely on WordPress for public-facing sites are particularly vulnerable. The lack of known exploits currently provides a window for proactive mitigation, but the ease of exploitation without user interaction increases urgency. Additionally, compromised sites could be used as pivot points for broader network attacks or to distribute malware, amplifying the threat to European digital infrastructure.

Immediate mitigation involves monitoring for updates from AA-Team and applying patches as soon as they are released. In the absence of patches, organizations should restrict access to the WordPress admin area using IP whitelisting or VPNs and audit user roles to ensure minimal privileges are assigned. Disable or remove the affected plugins if they are not critical to operations. Implement Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with rules to detect and block suspicious privilege escalation attempts targeting these plugins. Conduct regular security audits and vulnerability scans focusing on WordPress plugins and their configurations. Employ multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all administrative accounts to reduce the risk of compromised credentials being leveraged. Review and harden WordPress security settings, including limiting plugin installations to trusted sources and maintaining least privilege principles. Finally, monitor logs for unusual activity indicative of privilege escalation attempts and prepare incident response plans tailored to WordPress environments.