Tên plugin	Last.fm Recent Album Artwork
Type of Vulnerability	CSRF and XSS
CVE Number	CVE-2025-7684
Tính cấp bách	Thấp
CVE Publish Date	2025-08-15
Source URL	CVE-2025-7684

Urgent: Last.fm Recent Album Artwork (≤ 1.0.2) — CSRF leading to Stored XSS (CVE-2025-7684) — What WordPress Site Owners Need to Know and Do Now

Đã xuất bản: 15 August 2025
Tác giả: WP‑Firewall Security Team

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This post unpacks the recently disclosed vulnerability affecting the Last.fm Recent Album Artwork WordPress plugin (versions ≤ 1.0.2), tracked as CVE-2025-7684. The issue is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) that can be used to store Cross-Site Scripting (stored XSS) payloads. Here I’ll explain what the vulnerability is, how it can affect your site, safe detection and mitigation steps you can take immediately, and how WP‑Firewall protects you (including specific virtual‑patching and hardening measures we recommend).

This article is written from practical, hands‑on WordPress security experience. My goal is to give you clear, actionable guidance you can implement right away — even if you’re not a developer.

Table of contents

• What happened (high-level)
• Why this is concerning (risk summary)
• Technical summary (what the vulnerability is)
• Exploitation scenarios (realistic use-cases)
• How to check if you’re affected
• Immediate mitigation steps (recommended, non-destructive)
• Removal, patch and long-term recommendations
• Virtual patching and WAF rules we deploy as WP‑Firewall
• Monitoring, detection, and incident response plan
• Hardening advice to reduce future risk
• Why using WP‑Firewall free plan helps (new title + signup)
• Final notes and further reading

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What happened (high-level)

A vulnerability was disclosed affecting the Last.fm Recent Album Artwork plugin for WordPress (versions up to and including 1.0.2). The root issue is that certain plugin functionality can be triggered via CSRF — meaning an authenticated user (or, in some cases, an unauthenticated context where the plugin exposes endpoints) can be induced to perform an action they did not intend. That action can result in data stored on the site containing content that wasn’t properly sanitized, enabling stored cross‑site scripting (XSS). Stored XSS can let an attacker execute JavaScript in other users’ browsers, including administrators.

Although this vulnerability requires some user interaction (or tricking a logged‑in user) and is not a straightforward remote code execution vulnerability, the combination of CSRF → stored XSS is powerful. If an administrator or editor is tricked, the consequences can include user session theft, privilege escalation, site content injection, and the planting of further backdoors.

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Why this is concerning (risk summary)

• Mức độ nghiêm trọng: The reported CVSS behavior indicates significant impact (the published score is in the 7.1 range), reflecting the potential to pivot from a forced action to a persistent XSS.
• Hướng tấn công: The exploit chain leverages CSRF to store malicious content that executes later when an admin/editor views a page or dashboard area.
• Privilege implications: If the stored XSS is executed in an administrator’s browser, the attacker can perform admin‑only actions (add users, modify plugins/themes, install backdoors) using the admin’s session.
• Detection risk: Stored XSS may remain undetected for days or weeks and can be used to serve targeted payloads or to harvest credentials silently.
• Fix status: At disclosure time there was no official fixed plugin release available. That makes proactive mitigation and virtual patching especially important.

Given these factors, site owners with this plugin installed must act right away: check, mitigate, and if necessary remove the plugin until an official fix is available.

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Technical summary (what the vulnerability is)

At a technical level the issue is a CSRF vulnerability that permits an attacker to cause a user who is authenticated to the WordPress admin to make state‑changing requests without their consent. Those requests can inject content into a persistent store (e.g., a database field used by the plugin to store user‑provided values or artwork metadata). The plugin fails to properly verify a nonce or other CSRF protection token on the relevant action, and it fails to properly sanitize or escape that stored content prior to later rendering in a context that allows interpreted HTML/JavaScript (thus a stored XSS).

Key points:

• CSRF: The plugin exposes an endpoint or admin action that accepts POST (or GET) input and lacks proper WP nonce verification or capability checks.
• Stored XSS: The plugin stores attacker‑controlled input and later outputs that input into a page (admin page or front‑end) without proper escaping or filtering for HTML/JS.
• Attack chain: The attacker’s malicious page induces an admin (or a privileged editor) to unknowingly send a crafted request (CSRF). The victim’s browser authenticates the request (via active login cookie). Malicious content is stored. When the victim (or another admin/editor) views the stored content, the JavaScript executes.

Because this is a chained vulnerability (CSRF → stored XSS), even though an attacker cannot directly reach admin credentials without some trickery, the impact is high if they can trick an admin to visit a malicious page while logged in.

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Exploitation scenarios — realistic examples

I’ll describe plausible attack scenarios so you can understand where the risk lies and how to protect your site.

1. Targeted admin compromise
   • An attacker crafts a malicious web page (for example, an email or forum post with an embedded form) that submits a request to the vulnerable plugin’s endpoint.
   • A site administrator authenticated to your WordPress control panel views that page while still logged in to wp-admin.
   • The CSRF request stores a malicious payload that waits to be rendered in an admin view. When executed, the payload steals the admin’s session cookie or performs privileged actions invisibly.
2. Automated mass exploitation
   • Attackers scan sites for the plugin and automated scripts attempt to submit CSRF requests. If a logged‑in admin hits such an attacker‑controlled page, the stored payload is created and used to scale compromise.
3. Content poisoning and defacement
   • The stored XSS payload modifies site content or injects malicious front‑end scripts (eg. drive‑by cryptocurrency miners, SEO spam or phishing content), degrading trust and search engine ranking.
4. Supply‑chain pivoting
   • Once the attacker obtains admin privileges via stored XSS, they can install backdoor plugins, create new admin users, or alter theme files — giving them long‑term persistence.

Takeaway: Attackers combine social engineering (tricking a logged‑in user to visit a page) with code weaknesses (lack of CSRF nonce and output escaping) to escalate impact. That is why immediate mitigations and WAF rules are essential.

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How to check if you’re affected

Follow these steps to discover whether your site is running the vulnerable plugin and whether any indicators of compromise are present.

1. Identify plugin installation
   • Go to WordPress Admin → Plugins → Installed Plugins and look for “Last.fm Recent Album Artwork”.
   • If the plugin version is 1.0.2 or earlier, treat it as vulnerable.
2. Check for suspicious recent changes (admins only)
   • Review recent posts, custom database tables, and plugin settings for unexpected HTML or JavaScript tags.
   • Search the wp_options table and plugin‑specific tables for suspicious <script> tags, on* attributes (onclick, onload), or encoded payloads.
3. Check server logs
   • Look in web server access logs for strange POST requests to plugin endpoints or admin-ajax.php with unusual parameters.
   • Check for requests originating from external hosts with referers that are not typical admin navigation pages.
4. User behavior and admin sessions
   • Check active administrator sessions for suspicious logins or logouts.
   • Look for new users with elevated privileges.
5. Use safe scanning tools
   • Run a malware scanner (site‑side or hosted) to identify known webshells or suspicious modifications. Prefer tools that do not modify files or contact external services without your approval.

If you find malicious stored content or unexpected admin actions, follow the incident response steps below — and do not attempt to remove evidence before taking backups for forensic purposes (except for immediate containment).

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Immediate mitigation steps (recommended, non-destructive)

If you run the vulnerable plugin, take these immediate actions. These are ordered from fastest to more invasive.

1. Temporary containment — restrict admin access
   • Change administrative workflows: require admins to log out before browsing unknown web pages until mitigations are in place.
   • Limit admin logins to specific IPs (if possible) or require VPN access.
2. Disable or deactivate the plugin
   • The safest immediate action is to deactivate the vulnerable plugin temporarily. This stops the vulnerable processing entirely.
   • If deactivation is not possible quickly (conflicts, site functionality), proceed with WAF rule mitigation (see next).
3. Apply WAF virtual patching rules (recommended)
   • Block POST requests to the plugin’s specific endpoints unless accompanied by a valid nonce header.
   • Strip or sanitize inputs to plugin endpoints for suspicious characters or tags.
   • Block requests with common XSS payload markers to admin pages.
4. Enforce nonce and capability checks server-side
   • If you have developer resources available, add an interim patch: validate WP nonces and current_user_can checks before processing actions that write to storage.
   • Ensure output is escaped with appropriate functions (esc_html(), esc_attr(), wp_kses_post()).
5. Rotate sensitive credentials
   • Rotate admin passwords, API keys, and any credentials that may have been targeted. Encourage or enforce 2FA for all admin accounts.
6. Back up before any cleanup
   • Take a full site backup (files + database) immediately before any modification so you have a point of reference.
7. Monitor and scan for backdoors
   • Run file integrity scans (compare theme/plugin files to known good copies) and database searches for injected scripts or obfuscated content.

If you need to keep the plugin active for business reasons, virtual patching via a WAF is the fastest way to reduce risk while you wait for an official release or until you can safely remove the plugin.

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Removal, patch and long-term recommendations

Given there was no official fix at disclosure, treat the plugin as untrusted until an official, signed update is available.

• If you don’t need the plugin’s functionality: uninstall and delete it.
• If you need the functionality: replace the plugin with an alternative maintained plugin that follows WordPress security best practices (nonce validation, capability checks, sanitization/escaping).
• Keep plugins to a minimum: each additional plugin increases attack surface.
• Subscribe to vulnerability feeds and maintain a patch timeline for your site’s third‑party components.

When a vendor publishes an official patch:

• Read the changelog and verify that the update addresses nonce validation, capability checks, and proper escaping.
• Test updates in a staging environment before rolling out to production.

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Virtual patching and WAF rules we deploy at WP‑Firewall

As a WordPress firewall vendor, our priority is to prevent exploitation before a vendor fix is available. Here’s the approach we take to mitigate chained CSRF → stored XSS vulnerabilities like this one.

1. Block CSRF patterns to known plugin endpoints
   • We create rules that deny state‑changing methods (POST, PUT, DELETE) to the identified plugin endpoints unless a valid WordPress nonce or a recognized admin referer header is present.
2. Input sanitization and payload stripping
   • Request body filtering: strip suspicious script tags, event attributes (onclick, onmouseover), and javascript: pseudo‑protocols when incoming to the plugin endpoints.
   • We use a conservative blacklist for immediate protection, then refine to reduce false positives.
3. Contextual output protection
   • Where detection is ambiguous, we block requests that attempt to write HTML/JS into storage via plugin parameters commonly used for metadata or artwork captions.
4. Behavior and rate limiting
   • Implement rate limits on requests to plugin endpoints and admin‑facing AJAX endpoints.
   • Block IPs exhibiting automated scanning or repeated failed attempts.
5. Administrative session protection
   • Inject additional checks: require re‑authentication for sensitive actions and provide optional forced 2FA enforcement for admin sessions when suspicious activity is detected.
6. Rollback prevention
   • Automatically detect suspicious changes to plugin database fields and alert site owners in real time. Optionally quarantine records with suspicious payloads for admin review.
7. Logging and forensic capture
   • Capture full request and response logs for any rule match so incident responders have context for further analysis.

These virtual patches are rule‑based and designed to be minimally invasive. They protect while preserving legitimate functionality. If you’re protected by WP‑Firewall, these rules are deployed quickly to shield vulnerable endpoints until an upstream fix is pushed.

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Sample rule concepts (non-executable, descriptive)

Below are high‑level descriptions of the types of rules we implement. These are provided for transparency and to help developers craft their own temporary protections; they are not a ready‑to‑paste exploit.

• Rule A: Deny POST requests to /wp-admin/admin.php?*action=lastfm_* unless a valid wpnonce is present in request (or unless request originates from internal admin origin).
• Rule B: Sanitize request parameters containing markup; drop requests where parameters contain <script>, <img onerror="">, javascript:, or suspicious encoded equivalents.
• Rule C: Rate limit admin-ajax POST submissions hitting known plugin callbacks from a single IP to N requests per minute.
• Rule D: Quarantine writes to plugin option keys if the payload contains high entropy or suspicious obfuscation patterns; alert administrators and require manual review.

If you operate your own WAF, these are the patterns you would aim to implement. If not, ensure your managed security provider implements equivalent measures.

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Monitoring, detection, and incident response plan

If you suspect your site may already be compromised or you want to be prepared, follow this incident response checklist.

1. Containment
   • Immediately restrict access to the admin area (IP restriction, temporary maintenance mode, or deactivate the plugin).
   • Force logout of all admin sessions; rotate admin passwords; require MFA.
2. Preservation
   • Create a full backup of files and database for forensic analysis before modifying evidence (unless immediate site‑taking down is required for safety).
3. Triage
   • Scan for modified files, unknown plugins, and recently changed theme files.
   • Search the database for injected script tags or encoded payloads in posts, options, widgets, or custom tables.
4. Eradication
   • Remove the vulnerable plugin or replace with patched version once available.
   • Clean injected scripts from database entries and files. If unsure, enlist a professional incident responder.
5. Sự hồi phục
   • Harden the admin area: strong passwords, MFA, least privilege, and scheduled scanning.
   • Monitor logs and user activity for recurrence.
6. Post‑incident review
   • Determine how the exploit happened, what data (if any) was accessed, and whether other components were affected.
   • Document steps taken and measures to prevent recurrence.

If you don’t have internal resources, consider engaging a WordPress security incident response service. Fast containment reduces the window attackers have for lateral movement and persistence.

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Hardening advice to reduce future risk

These best practices reduce the overall attack surface and harden your WordPress installation against similar plugin vulnerabilities.

• Principle of least privilege
  • Only grant necessary roles to users. Reduce the number of administrators and use the Editor/Author role where appropriate.
• Two‑factor authentication (2FA)
  • Enforce 2FA for all privileged accounts to make session theft less powerful.
• Plugin hygiene
  • Maintain an inventory of installed plugins and active themes.
  • Remove plugins that are unused, unsupported, or abandoned.
  • Check plugin update frequency and community feedback before adding new third‑party code.
• Staging and testing
  • Always test plugin updates in a staging environment before production rollout.
• Nonce and capability checks
  • Encourage plugin developers to validate WP nonces and use current_user_can() checks for privileged actions.
• Output escaping
  • Use WordPress escaping functions extensively: esc_html(), esc_attr(), esc_url(), wp_kses_post().
• Logging and monitoring
  • Centralize logs and watch for anomalous admin actions and unexpected POSTs to plugin endpoints.
• Backups and restores
  • Regularly backup and test restore procedures. Backups are your last line of defense.

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Protect your site today — Free plan available

Title: Start with Essential Protection — WP‑Firewall Free Plan

Every site owner should have a safety net. WP‑Firewall offers a free Basic plan that includes essential managed firewall protection, unlimited bandwidth, a WordPress WAF tuned for common CMS risks, a malware scanner, and mitigations for OWASP Top 10 threats. If you run a small site or want immediate baseline protection against vulnerabilities like CVE‑2025‑7684, our Basic (Free) tier lets you deploy virtual protection instantly while you evaluate longer‑term options.

Try the free plan and get instant protection: https://my.wp-firewall.com/buy/wp-firewall-free-plan/

(If you need more advanced features such as automatic malware removal, IP blacklisting/whitelisting, monthly security reports, or automatic virtual patching for new vulnerabilities, we offer Standard and Pro plans described on our site.)

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Practical developer checklist (safe, non-invasive changes you can make now)

If you maintain the site and have development resources, here are code‑level checks and quick fixes to reduce exposure.

1. Add nonce checks
   • Before processing any POST-based state changes, call check_admin_referer(‘your_action’) or check_ajax_referer(‘your_nonce’).
2. Capability checks
   • For actions that change plugin settings or store content, ensure you validate current_user_can(‘manage_options’) or another appropriate capability.
3. Escape output
   • When printing stored values, use esc_html() or wp_kses_post() to strip disallowed HTML. Restrict allowed tags carefully.
4. Validate input
   • Whitelist acceptable input rather than blacklisting strings. For example, if a field should only contain album names, allow a trimmed subset of characters and length.
5. Sanitize on save
   • Use sanitize_text_field(), wp_kses(), or sanitize_textarea_field() when saving user input to the database.
6. Logging
   • Add audit logs for sensitive setting changes so you can trace the origin of unexpected changes.

These changes are the right long‑term fixes. Use them as soon as possible and treat them as standard practice for plugin development.

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Frequently asked questions

Q: Is stored XSS always dangerous?

A: Stored XSS is one of the more dangerous XSS variants because the payload persists and executes in multiple users’ browsers. If it runs in an administrator’s browser the attacker can leverage admin privileges to take over a site.

Q: My site has backups — can I just restore to an earlier backup?

A: Restoring to a pre‑compromise backup helps, but you must ensure the vulnerability is fixed so the attacker cannot immediately re‑exploit. Also rotate credentials because backups may contain stolen secrets.

Q: I don’t have time to test code. What’s the fastest safe action?

A: Deactivate the vulnerable plugin and enable WAF virtual patching. This provides immediate containment while you plan a safer approach.

Q: Can a WAF/virtual patch permanently fix the issue?

A: A WAF can mitigate exploitation but does not replace a vendor patch. Virtual patching buys time and reduces risk while a proper fix (code change in the plugin) is adopted.

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Final notes

If you run WordPress sites, you’ll occasionally face situations where a plugin component is vulnerable and a vendor fix is not yet available. The best defense is a multi‑layered approach:

• Hardening and least privilege at the application level,
• Rapid virtual patching with a managed WAF to prevent exploitation,
• Strong monitoring and incident response preparedness,
• Regular backups and access control.

If you have this plugin installed, take immediate action: verify your version, apply mitigations, and consider deactivating the plugin until a secure version is released. If you want to ensure rapid protection with minimal disruption, WP‑Firewall’s free plan provides essential managed firewall and WAF protections that block common exploitation vectors and help keep your site safe while you remediate.

If you’d like assistance applying these mitigations, our security experts can help you assess risk, implement virtual patches, and run an integrity scan of your site.

Stay safe, and treat plugin vulnerabilities with urgency — the time between disclosure and active exploitation is shortening every year.

— WP‑Firewall Security Team

References and further reading

• CVE: CVE‑2025‑7684 (refer to public CVE entry for timeline)
• WordPress hardening and secure coding best practices (developer documentation)
• OWASP Top 10 — a helpful reference for common web application risks