Account takeover (ATO) vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem have reached a critical point in May 2025. Threat actors have been exploiting these flaws to bypass authentication, elevate privileges, and ultimately gain administrative access to vulnerable websites. The consequences are severe, including complete site control, stolen customer data, SEO poisoning, malware injections, and blocklisting by search engines or ad platforms.

This article aims to highlight the most critical ATO-related vulnerabilities reported in May and provide urgent best practices to protect your WordPress site.

Account takeover vulnerabilities target the core of any website's trust and integrity: user identity. When attackers can assume the identity of legitimate users—especially administrators—they gain control over every function within the WordPress backend. This can lead to:

• Website defacement or shutdown
• Insertion of malicious scripts or backdoors
• Theft of sensitive customer or business data
• Deployment of phishing campaigns or spam
• Long-term brand and SEO damage

These types of attacks are hazardous because they are often executed without any user interaction (CVSS vector: UI:N) and require no privileges to initiate (CVSS vector: PR:N), making them easy to automate and scale.

Below are some of the most critical account takeover-related vulnerabilities reported this past month:

1 CVE-2025-4322 - Motors Theme

• Risk: Allows unauthenticated attackers to change user passwords.
• Impact: Full admin access.
• Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Details

2 CVE-2025-3605 - Frontend Login and Registration Blocks

• Risk: Attackers can change admin email addresses and reset passwords.

Details

3 CVE-2025-3811 & CVE-2025-3810 - WPBookit Plugin

• Risk: Identity validation flaws enable email and password modifications.
• Vector: Both vulnerabilities allow privilege escalation through manipulated AJAX requests.

CVE-2025-3811 | CVE-2025-3810


4 CVE-2025-4104 - Frontend Dashboard Plugin

• Risk: Admin login credentials can be reset without any privileges.

Details

5 CVE-2025-3844 - PeproDev Ultimate Profile Solutions

• Risk: OTP mechanism can be abused to log in as any user.

Details

6 CVE-2025-1909 - BuddyBoss Platform Pro

• Risk: Apple OAuth flow can be hijacked to authenticate as any user.

Details

7 CVE-2025-3918 - Job Listings Plugin

• Risk: Plugin reads user roles directly from user-supplied data, enabling admin role assignments.

Details

8 CVE-2025-3746 - OTP-less One Tap Sign-In

• Risk: Exploitable for account takeover due to lack of validation and insecure cookie handling.

Details

When attackers gain unauthorized access to administrator accounts, the damage extends far beyond just technical disruption—it strikes at the heart of a business’s credibility, revenue, and operational continuity.

In some incidents, attackers silently planted backdoors through vulnerable plugins, such as WP-Automatic, which was exploited via SQL injection attacks. These backdoors enabled long-term, stealthy access to infected sites, leading to data theft and repeated reinfections—even after the initial compromise was cleaned up.

Account takeover attacks have also been tied to SEO poisoning—injecting spam links, redirects, or JavaScript payloads into websites to manipulate search rankings. In many cases throughout last year, compromised admin accounts were used to inject thousands of rogue URLs across WordPress installations, damaging the site's reputation and resulting in Google blocklisting.

In early 2025, attackers launched a widespread campaign using backdoored plugins to create rogue admin accounts and silently install JavaScript-based backdoors across over 1,000 WordPress sites. These infections often remained undetected for weeks, allowing cybercriminals to collect sensitive data and reinfect cleaned systems.

Additionally, a trojanized proof-of-concept exploit uploaded to GitHub in May 2025 compromised nearly 390,000 developer and administrator accounts, leaking SSH keys, WordPress credentials, and even AWS access tokens. This real-world example highlights the ripple effect that a single account takeover can have—spanning WordPress, GitHub, cloud infrastructure, and beyond.

Account takeovers are:

• Silent – Most users never notice until severe damage is done.
• Automated – Bots continuously probe and exploit vulnerabilities at scale.
• Highly Profitable – Stolen data, injected malware, and SEO spam can be rapidly monetized.

Whether you run a small business website or manage a large e-commerce store, the consequences of admin-level compromise are severe. The reality is apparent: if you're not actively securing your WordPress site, you're a target.

In the next section, we’ll break down proactive steps to mitigate these risks—and show how Quttera Website Security Services can help fortify your site against both known and emerging threats.

Our Website Security Services go far beyond basic scanning. Our platform is designed to proactively detect, contain, and prevent exploitation attempts before they compromise your website. Using a multi-layered security model, we help you stay ahead of both known and emerging threats.

Here’s how these services strengthen your website's defence:

• Deep Malware Scanning (Files & Database) - We continuously scan core files, themes, plugins, and your database for injected malware, suspicious code, and hidden backdoors—often missed by standard tools.

• Heuristic Threat Detection - Our innovative detection engine analyses abnormal behaviours and access patterns—not just signatures—enabling us to catch zero-day threats and obfuscated attacks.

• Real-Time IP Reputation Shielding - Web application firewall blocks traffic from known malicious IPs and botnets and exploits sources using up-to-date intelligence feeds, reducing the chance of automated attacks reaching your site.

• Intrusion & Privilege Abuse Monitoring - We monitor for signs of suspicious activity, including unauthorized login attempts, unexpected privilege escalations, and rogue user creation—helping you identify breaches early.

• Expert-Led Incident Response & Cleanup - When an incident occurs, our cybersecurity experts are ready to step in with hands-on investigation, remediation, and post-attack hardening to secure your environment.

Whether you're running a small blog or managing a high-traffic business site, Quttera’s expert team helps ensure your website stays secure, your reputation intact, and your visitors protected.

Account takeover vulnerabilities are among the most dangerous threats to WordPress websites. They require no user interaction and can result in full site compromise. As threat actors increasingly automate such attacks, website owners must take proactive security measures to protect their websites.

Leveraging professional tools and services, like those offered by Quttera, ensures your site remains protected against both known CVEs and emerging threats.

Stay informed, stay secure, and act before attackers do.