Threat Intelligence / CVE / CVE-2020-25213

CVE-2020-25213 — Filemanagerpro File Manager

CISA KEV
CVSS v3.1 10 (CRITICAL) · EPSS 97.3% (higher than 99.8% of all scored CVEs) · Priority 9/10 · Published 2020-09-09

As of 2025-10-21, CVE-2020-25213 is a CRITICAL-severity vulnerability in Filemanagerpro File Manager, CVSS v3.1 10, EPSS 97.3% (99.8th percentile). It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03), with a US federal remediation deadline of 2022-05-03. Threadlinqs Intelligence links 2 tracked threat campaigns to CVE-2020-25213, most recently “WP-SHELLSTORM: Exposed Chinese-Speaking Threat Actor Server Reveals Mass WordPress/Joomla Webshell Brokerage Targeting 1.4M Domains via CVE-2026-48907 (Joomla JCE) and CVE-2021-29441 (Nacos)”.

Last updated: 2025-10-21

What is CVE-2020-25213?

The File Manager (wp-file-manager) plugin before 6.9 for WordPress allows remote attackers to upload and execute arbitrary PHP code because it renames an unsafe example elFinder connector file to have the .php extension. This, for example, allows attackers to run the elFinder upload (or mkfile and put) command to write PHP code into the wp-content/plugins/wp-file-manager/lib/files/ directory. This was exploited in the wild in August and September 2020.

The record classifies CVE-2020-25213 under weakness class CWE-434. Its CVSS v3 base vector states that the flaw is reachable remotely over the network, needs no prior authentication, needs no user interaction, and has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability. 1 affected-product entry is recorded, across 1 vendor, listed below. The identifier was first published 2204 days ago.

Severity and exploitation probability

CVSS v3.1 base score
10 — CRITICAL
CVSS:3.1/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:N/S:C/UI:N
EPSS (FIRST)
97.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.8% of all scored CVEs
CISA KEV
Listed since 2021-11-03, federal remediation deadline 2022-05-03
Threadlinqs priority
9/10 — CISA KEV-listed, which Threadlinqs floors at 9
Published
2020-09-09, last modified 2025-10-21

Is CVE-2020-25213 being exploited?

CISA added CVE-2020-25213 to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03, which means the agency holds evidence of exploitation in the wild; US federal civilian agencies had to remediate it by 2022-05-03 under BOD 22-01. Weaponised exploit code for CVE-2020-25213 is publicly available. 11 public proof-of-concept repositories are tracked for this identifier. A ProjectDiscovery Nuclei detection template exists (http/cves/2020/CVE-2020-25213.yaml). It currently carries a trending score of 45 in the Threadlinqs vulnerability feed.

Affected products and versions

How to fix CVE-2020-25213

The record marks a vendor fix as available for CVE-2020-25213. Patch reference: https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/2373068. Because CVE-2020-25213 is KEV-listed, US federal civilian agencies were required to apply the vendor fix, or stop using the product, by 2022-05-03. Apply the vendor fix referenced above to every affected product listed in this record, then confirm the running version against the vendor advisory.

Threat activity tracking CVE-2020-25213

2 tracked threats in the Threadlinqs corpus reference CVE-2020-25213, either in the campaign’s CVE list or as an indicator on the campaign record.

Sources

Enriched from CVE.org, NVD, FIRST EPSS, CISA KEV, GitHub Security Advisories, public proof-of-concept repositories, ProjectDiscovery Nuclei. Last verified by Threadlinqs on . This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.

Other references

Showing 5 of 9 recorded references.

Full detection coverage & IOCs for threats exploiting CVE-2020-25213 are available via the Threadlinqs MCP server (Purple tier). View plans →

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