CVE-2025-11833 Post SMTP exposes more than 400,000 WordPress sites to critical administrator account takeover, with at least 210,000 still running vulnerable plugin versions. The Post SMTP email delivery plugin fails to enforce authorization checks in the PostmanEmailLogs constructor, allowing unauthenticated attackers to directly render logged email content. By harvesting password reset links from these logs, adversaries can reset administrator credentials and assume full control of target sites without ever knowing a valid username or password. The flaw, scored 9.8 in CVSS, affects Post SMTP 3.6.0 and earlier, and follows a related log exposure bug tracked as CVE-2025-24000 that enabled similar email log abuse. CVE-2025-11833 Post SMTP risk is highest for organizations that rely on WordPress for customer portals, marketing sites, or documentation hubs where a stealthy admin hijack can be leveraged to deploy web skimmers, malware, or phishing content. Wordfence has already blocked thousands of exploit attempts since attacks began on November 1, confirming that real-world exploitation is underway. Because roughly half of known installations have not yet updated, enterprises should assume opportunistic scanning and automated exploitation targeting Post SMTP endpoints, particularly on internet-exposed sites. CVE-2025-11833 Post SMTP mitigation requires immediate upgrade to version 3.6.1 or higher, or temporary plugin disablement if patching cannot occur quickly. Security teams should review administrator password reset activity, verify that user email addresses and roles have not been tampered with, and search web server and WordPress logs for unexpected PostmanEmailLogs requests from untrusted IP ranges. Longer term, organizations should restrict access to administrative email logs, deploy a Web Application Firewall with rules tuned for password-reset abuse, and enforce strong MFA on all WordPress administrator accounts to reduce the blast radius of any residual exposure.
🎯CORTEX Protocol Intelligence Assessment
Business Impact: CVE-2025-11833 Post SMTP enables silent takeover of public-facing WordPress sites that often host brand-critical content, customer communications, or lightweight portals. Compromise can quickly escalate into malware distribution, SEO poisoning, or credential harvesting that damages reputation and erodes customer trust. Technical Context: The vulnerability combines an authorization bypass in email log rendering with abuse of password reset workflows, creating a high-reliability path to administrator control without prior authentication. Active exploitation and a large remaining vulnerable population make this flaw a priority target for automated scanners, demanding rapid patching and enhanced monitoring of password reset behavior.
⚡Strategic Intelligence Guidance
- Prioritize upgrading all WordPress sites using Post SMTP to version 3.6.1 or later, starting with internet-facing instances that handle customer or payment-related workflows.
- Harden WordPress authentication by enforcing MFA for all administrator accounts and restricting access to password reset endpoints via rate limiting and anomaly detection.
- Deploy WAF or reverse-proxy rules that detect unusual access to PostmanEmailLogs functionality and block requests from suspicious IP ranges or automated scanners.
- Conduct a focused review of recent password reset emails, admin account changes, and plugin modifications on affected sites to identify and remediate any successful compromises.
CVEs
CVE-2025-11833CVE-2025-24000
Vendors
Post SMTPWordPressWordfence
Threats
Administrator account takeoverEmail log disclosure
Targets
WordPress websitesSite administrators
Impact
Data Volume:400,000 installations; 210,000 unpatched