CVE-2025-66162: 
WordPress vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-66162 is a Missing Authorization (Broken Access Control) vulnerability in the Spoter for Elementor WordPress plugin developed by merkulove. It allows authenticated attackers with low-level privileges to exploit incorrectly configured access control security levels. All versions up to and including 1.04 are affected. The vulnerability was disclosed on December 16, 2025, by Patchstack, and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.4 (Medium) (Feedly, Patchstack).

The root cause is classified as CWE-862 (Missing Authorization) — the plugin fails to properly verify whether a requesting user has the appropriate permissions before executing certain actions or exposing functionality. This allows a low-privileged authenticated user (e.g., a subscriber or contributor) to perform actions that should be restricted to higher-privileged roles. The attack vector is network-based, requires low privileges, no user interaction, and low attack complexity, making it straightforward to exploit once an attacker has any valid WordPress account (Feedly, Patchstack).

Successful exploitation results in limited but meaningful confidentiality and integrity impacts — an attacker can read data or perform actions beyond their intended privilege level. While availability is not impacted, the broken access control could allow unauthorized modification of plugin-controlled content or settings on affected WordPress sites. The scope is limited to the affected installation, with no evidence of lateral movement potential beyond the WordPress environment (Feedly).

No public proof-of-concept exploit code or in-the-wild exploitation has been reported for CVE-2025-66162. The EPSS score is very low at 0.017%, indicating a minimal probability of exploitation in the near term. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. Exploitation requires a valid (low-privileged) WordPress account on the target site (Feedly).

Users should update the Spoter for Elementor plugin to a version beyond 1.04 if a patched release is available from the plugin developer (merkulove). If no patched version is yet available, site administrators should consider deactivating the plugin until a fix is released, and restrict WordPress user registrations to trusted individuals only. Monitoring WordPress user activity logs for unexpected access to plugin-related functionality is also advisable (Patchstack).