CVE-2025-13820

Comments – wpDiscuz <= 7.6.39 - Unauthenticated Authentication Bypass Through Account Takeover

2025-12-11 00:00
wesley (wcraft)

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 7.6.40
Affected Plugin
Comments – wpDiscuz
Affected Version
<= 7.6.39
CVSS
8.1High
Weakness type
CWE-639 · Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key
CVE
CVE-2025-13820
View all Comments – wpDiscuz vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2025-13820 is a high-severity Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key vulnerability in the Comments WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 7.6.39. It carries a CVSS score of 8.1 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 7.6.40; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2025, reported by wesley (wcraft).

Vulnerability Overview

The Comments – wpDiscuz plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Authentication Bypass in all versions up to, and including, 7.6.39. This is due to the plugin not properly validating a user's identity through the disqus.com provider. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to authenticate as other users if they have not set up disqus.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, and no privileges on the target site, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-639: Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key

Reaching this weakness in Comments <= 7.6.39 takes no account at all. Authorization bypass through a user-controlled key, often called insecure direct object reference, means the application looks up a record by an identifier from the request without checking that the caller owns it.

Changing a number in the request is enough to read or modify other users' records, which on commerce and membership sites means customer data. For Comments the fix is 7.6.40: builds <= 7.6.39 are affected, anything from 7.6.40 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 7.6.40, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

This one needs no account at all, which puts it outside what login hardening can reach; WordSec's login security narrows the account-level paths around it, and the firewall is what inspects the request itself. None of that substitutes for the fix: Comments 7.6.40 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-13820https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/69df711e-45b7-446f-8944-247ca180e0d9https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-13820

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C