VulnerabilityPublished 19 Aug 2025Updated 20 Aug 2025

CVE-2025-51488: MoonShine · Cross-site Scripting

Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.9 Medium · fixed in 3.12.4 : update affected systems when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.9Medium

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

EPSS: 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 46% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 3.12.4

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

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: None
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: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
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: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within 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 19 Aug 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 26 Oct 2026.

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 or the CVSS exploit maturity 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

AI-suggested

European organizations should prioritize upgrading MoonShine to version 3.12.4 or later as soon as the patch becomes available to remediate this vulnerability. In the interim, organizations should enforce strict access controls and monitoring on administrative accounts to prevent unauthorized creation of new Admin users. Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all privileged accounts can reduce the risk of account compromise. Additionally, input validation and output encoding should be reviewed and enhanced in the application to prevent injection of malicious scripts. Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) can be configured to detect and block suspicious payloads targeting the Name parameter during admin creation. Regular security audits and penetration testing focused on privilege escalation and XSS vulnerabilities are recommended. Finally, educating administrators about the risks of stored XSS and encouraging cautious handling of user-generated content in admin interfaces can help mitigate exploitation.

Description

A Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability exists in MoonShine version < 3.12.4, allowing remote attackers to store and execute arbitrary JavaScript by including a malicious HTML payload in the Name parameter when creating a new Admin.

Impact

For European organizations using MoonShine software, particularly those managing administrative interfaces exposed to multiple users, this vulnerability poses a risk of sensitive information disclosure. Since the attack requires high privileges to create a new Admin user, the threat is primarily from insider attackers or compromised privileged accounts. Successful exploitation could allow attackers to execute scripts in the context of admin users, potentially stealing session tokens, credentials, or other confidential data accessible in the admin interface. This could lead to further compromise of organizational systems or data breaches. Given the medium CVSS score and the requirement for high privileges, the risk is moderate but significant in environments with multiple administrators or where privilege escalation is possible. The lack of impact on integrity and availability reduces the risk of direct system manipulation or denial of service, but confidentiality breaches can still have serious regulatory and reputational consequences, especially under GDPR requirements in Europe.

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

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 27 Aug 2025, 01:08 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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