CVE-2025-66164: 
WordPress vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-66164 is a Missing Authorization (Broken Access Control) vulnerability in the Laser WordPress plugin developed by merkulove. It allows authenticated attackers with low-level privileges to exploit incorrectly configured access control security levels, potentially reading or modifying data they should not have access to. The vulnerability affects all versions of the Laser plugin up to and including 1.1.1. It was published on December 16, 2025, and assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.4 (Medium) (NVD, 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 access or invoke plugin functionality that should be restricted to higher-privileged roles such as administrators. The attack vector is network-based, requires low privileges, low complexity, and no user interaction, making it straightforward to exploit once an attacker has any valid WordPress account (NVD, Patchstack).

Successful exploitation results in limited but meaningful confidentiality and integrity impacts — an attacker can read data they are not authorized to access and make unauthorized modifications, though availability is not affected. The scope is limited to the affected WordPress installation, but depending on the plugin's functionality, this could expose sensitive site configuration or allow unauthorized content manipulation. The vulnerability does not enable remote code execution or privilege escalation on its own, but could be chained with other weaknesses (NVD).

No public proof-of-concept exploit code or evidence of in-the-wild exploitation has been reported for CVE-2025-66164. The EPSS score is very low at approximately 0.017%, indicating a low probability of exploitation in the near term. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. No threat actor attribution has been identified (NVD).

Users should update the Laser WordPress plugin to a version beyond 1.1.1 if a patched release is available from the merkulove developer. If no patched version is yet available, the recommended workaround is to deactivate and remove the plugin until a fix is released. Site administrators should also audit user roles and restrict plugin access to trusted accounts only, and monitor WordPress user activity logs for unexpected access patterns (Patchstack, NVD).