CVE-2025-9944 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability affecting the Professional Contact Form plugin for WordPress, developed by kelderic. This vulnerability exists in all versions up to and including 1.0.0 due to missing or incorrect nonce validation in the function watch_for_contact_form_submit. Nonces in WordPress are security tokens used to verify that requests originate from legitimate users and not from malicious third-party sites. The absence or improper implementation of nonce validation allows an unauthenticated attacker to craft a malicious request that, if an authenticated site administrator is tricked into clicking a link or visiting a malicious webpage, can trigger the plugin to send test emails without the administrator's consent. This attack vector exploits the trust relationship between the administrator's browser session and the WordPress site. Although the vulnerability does not directly compromise confidentiality or availability, it impacts integrity by allowing unauthorized actions to be performed on behalf of the administrator. The CVSS 3.1 base score is 4.3 (medium severity), reflecting that the attack requires user interaction (UI:R) but no privileges (PR:N) and can be executed remotely (AV:N) with low attack complexity (AC:L). There are no known exploits in the wild at the time of publication, and no patches have been released yet. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-352, which is a common web security weakness related to CSRF attacks. Given the widespread use of WordPress and its plugins, this vulnerability could affect many websites using this specific plugin if not mitigated promptly.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a moderate risk primarily to websites running WordPress with the Professional Contact Form plugin installed. The impact is mainly on the integrity of the affected site’s operations, as attackers can cause unauthorized test emails to be sent, potentially leading to email spam, phishing attempts, or reputation damage if attackers use this vector to send misleading or malicious content. While the vulnerability does not directly expose sensitive data or cause denial of service, the ability to perform actions as an administrator without authentication can be leveraged in multi-stage attacks or social engineering campaigns. Organizations relying on WordPress for customer contact or lead generation should be cautious, as exploitation could undermine trust in their communication channels. Additionally, regulatory frameworks in Europe such as GDPR emphasize the protection of personal data and integrity of communications, so any misuse of contact forms could have compliance implications if personal data is involved or if the attack leads to data misuse.

Specific mitigation steps include: 1) Immediate review and update of the Professional Contact Form plugin to a patched version once available from the vendor. Since no patches are currently released, organizations should consider temporarily disabling the plugin or replacing it with alternative contact form plugins that implement proper nonce validation. 2) Implement Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block suspicious POST requests targeting the contact form submission endpoints, especially those lacking valid nonce tokens or originating from untrusted referrers. 3) Educate site administrators about the risks of clicking on unsolicited links or visiting untrusted websites while logged into the WordPress admin panel to reduce the risk of social engineering exploitation. 4) Employ Content Security Policy (CSP) headers and SameSite cookie attributes to limit cross-origin requests and reduce CSRF attack surface. 5) Regularly audit WordPress plugins for security best practices, focusing on nonce usage and input validation. 6) Monitor logs for unusual email sending activity or unexpected form submissions that could indicate exploitation attempts.