IndieAuth <= 4.5.4 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Account Takeover via Stolen OAuth Tokens
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 4.5.5
- Affected Plugin
- IndieAuth
- Affected Version
<= 4.5.4- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2025-12028
At a glance
CVE-2025-12028 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the IndieAuth WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.5.4. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.5.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2025, reported by Jonas Benjamin Friedli.
Vulnerability Overview
The IndieAuth plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in all versions up to, and including, 4.5.4. This is due to missing nonce verification on the `login_form_indieauth()` function and the authorization endpoint at wp-login.php?action=indieauth. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to force authenticated users to approve OAuth authorization requests for attacker-controlled applications via a forged request granted they can trick a user into performing an action such as clicking on a link or visiting a malicious page while logged in. The attacker can then exchange the stolen authorization code for an access token, effectively taking over the victim's account with the granted scopes (create, update, delete).
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 privileges on the target site. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.
CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
IndieAuth <= 4.5.4 carries this weakness at login_form_indieauth(), and reaching it takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Cross-site request forgery abuses the fact that browsers attach a victim's cookies to any request, so a state-changing action that only checks who you are, not whether you meant to act, can be triggered from another site.
An attacker who gets a logged-in user to load a crafted page can perform that action as them, with the impact scaling to whatever the victim's role is allowed to do. For IndieAuth the fix is 4.5.5: builds <= 4.5.4 are affected, anything from 4.5.5 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 4.5.5, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to IndieAuth: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: IndieAuth 4.5.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C