Employee Spotlight – Team Member Showcase & Meet the Team Plugin <= 5.1.3 - Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Subscriber+) Tracking Opt-In/Opt-Out Modification
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 5.1.4
- Affected Version
<= 5.1.3- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-862 · Missing Authorization
- CVE
CVE-2025-13403
At a glance
CVE-2025-13403 is a medium-severity Missing Authorization vulnerability in the Employee Spotlight WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 5.1.3. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Subscriber level or above. The issue is fixed in version 5.1.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2025, reported by Legion Hunter.
Vulnerability Overview
The Employee Spotlight – Team Member Showcase & Meet the Team Plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized tracking settings modification due to missing authorization validation on the employee_spotlight_check_optin() function in all versions up to, and including, 5.1.3. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Subscriber-level access and above, to enable or disable tracking settings.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed, and no interaction from a victim user.
CWE-862: Missing Authorization
Employee Spotlight <= 5.1.3 carries this weakness at employee_spotlight_check_optin(), and reaching it takes an account at Subscriber level or above. A missing authorization check means a function is reachable by anyone who can reach the endpoint, because the code never asks whether the caller is allowed to perform the action.
Any user who can reach the endpoint gets to run an action reserved for higher-privileged roles, from reading protected data to changing settings or content. For Employee Spotlight the fix is 5.1.4: builds <= 5.1.3 are affected, anything from 5.1.4 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 5.1.4, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. None of that substitutes for the fix: Employee Spotlight 5.1.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Employee Spotlight – Team Member Showcase & Meet the Team Plugin
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