CVE-2025-62098: 
WordPress vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-62098 is a Missing Authorization (Broken Access Control) vulnerability in the Portfolio Gallery WordPress plugin by Totalsoft (also known as gallery-portfolio). It affects all versions up to and including 1.4.8, allowing authenticated attackers with low privileges (Subscriber-level) to exploit incorrectly configured access control security levels. The vulnerability was reported by researcher Nabil Irawan on September 24, 2025, and publicly disclosed by Patchstack on December 31, 2025. It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.4 (Medium) (Patchstack, Red Hat CVE).

The vulnerability is classified as CWE-862 (Missing Authorization), corresponding to OWASP Top 10 category A1: Broken Access Control. The root cause is the absence of proper authorization, authentication, or nonce token checks on one or more plugin functions, allowing a low-privileged authenticated user (e.g., a Subscriber) to invoke actions that should be restricted to higher-privileged roles. An attacker with a valid WordPress account can send crafted requests to the vulnerable plugin endpoints to perform unauthorized operations. No public proof-of-concept code has been identified at this time (Patchstack).

Successful exploitation results in limited integrity and availability impacts — specifically, a low-privileged authenticated user can perform unauthorized actions on portfolio gallery data, such as modifying or deleting gallery content they should not have access to. There is no confidentiality impact identified. The scope is limited to the affected WordPress installation, and lateral movement or significant data exfiltration is not a primary concern for this vulnerability (Patchstack, Red Hat CVE).

As of the disclosure date (December 31, 2025), no official patch has been released by the plugin vendor (Totalsoft). Site administrators are advised to deactivate and remove the Portfolio Gallery plugin (gallery-portfolio) until a patched version becomes available. Alternatively, a web application firewall (WAF) solution such as Patchstack can provide virtual patching to block exploitation attempts without requiring a plugin update. Access to WordPress sites should be restricted to trusted users, and open registration should be disabled where possible to reduce the attack surface (Patchstack).

The vulnerability was discovered by independent researcher Nabil Irawan and disclosed through Patchstack's vulnerability disclosure program. Patchstack characterizes the issue as low priority with unlikely exploitation impact. No significant vendor statements, broader media coverage, or notable community discussion has been identified beyond the initial Patchstack advisory (Patchstack).