CVE-2025-3650VulnerabilityPublished 12 Sep 2025

CVE-2025-3650: jQuery Colorbox (WordPress plugin) · Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Affects jQuery Colorbox (WordPress plugin)Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 3.5 Low.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

3.5Low

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 7% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: Low
Integrity: Low
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 12 Sep 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-25.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
jQuery Colorbox	Affected =0	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

European organizations should take the following specific steps to mitigate this vulnerability: 1) Immediately audit WordPress sites to identify installations of the jQuery Colorbox plugin, especially versions up to 4.6.3. 2) Restrict contributor role assignments to trusted users only, minimizing the risk of malicious insiders or compromised accounts. 3) Implement strict input validation and sanitization on all user-generated content, particularly on title attributes and other HTML attributes that can be interpreted by browsers. 4) Monitor administrative activity and logs for unusual behavior that could indicate exploitation attempts. 5) Employ Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to restrict the execution of inline scripts and reduce the impact of XSS attacks. 7) Educate administrators about the risk of clicking on untrusted content within the admin interface. 8) Keep WordPress core and all plugins updated to the latest versions to benefit from security fixes. These measures, combined, will reduce the likelihood and impact of exploitation.

Description

The jQuery Colorbox WordPress plugin through 4.6.3 uses the colorbox library, which does not sanitize title attributes on links before using them, allowing users with at least the contributor role to conduct XSS attacks against administrators.

Impact

For European organizations using WordPress sites with the jQuery Colorbox plugin, this vulnerability poses a moderate risk primarily to site administrators and the integrity of the site content. An attacker with contributor access could exploit this XSS flaw to execute scripts in the administrator's browser, potentially leading to credential theft, unauthorized content changes, or further compromise of the site infrastructure. This could result in reputational damage, data leakage, or unauthorized administrative actions. While the vulnerability requires authenticated access at the contributor level, many organizations allow external or internal users to register with such privileges, increasing the attack surface. For organizations in sectors with strict data protection regulations such as GDPR, even limited data exposure or unauthorized access could lead to compliance issues and penalties. Additionally, compromised administrative accounts could be leveraged for more extensive attacks, including defacement or malware distribution. The low CVSS score suggests limited direct impact, but the potential for chained attacks or exploitation in targeted campaigns should not be underestimated.

CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #1OWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages.
Architecture and Design · Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch (opens in a new tab)
DOM-Based XSS (opens in a new tab)
Reflected XSS (opens in a new tab)
Stored XSS (opens in a new tab)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

wpscan.com/vulnerability/5afdd448-0f7e-409e-a47b-8e5c5b707639/ (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 12 Sep 2025, 16:33 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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