A serious security issue has been discovered in the widely used W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin, exposing websites to the risk of unauthorized PHP command execution. The flaw allows attackers to run dangerous commands on a server simply by submitting a comment that contains harmful code.
The vulnerability is tracked as CVE 2025 9501 and affects every version of the plugin released before version 2.8.13. Security researchers describe it as an unauthenticated command injection that can be triggered without any login or access rights. W3 Total Cache is installed on more than one million websites and is known for improving performance and speeding up page load times.
The developer issued version 2.8.13 on October 20 to fix the issue. However, data from WordPress indicates that a large number of websites remain exposed. Since the update was released only about 430000 downloads have been recorded suggesting that hundreds of thousands of sites may still be vulnerable.
According to a security company an attacker can exploit CVE 2025 9501 through the _parse_dynamic_mfunc function which handles dynamic function calls inside cached content. The researchers explained that “The cache plugin is vulnerable to command injection via the _parse_dynamic_mfunc function, allowing unauthenticated users to execute PHP commands by submitting a comment with a malicious payload to a post.”
If exploited successfully the flaw can give attackers full control over a targeted website because they can run any server level command without authentication. Researchers have already created a proof of concept for the vulnerability and plan to release it on November 24 which gives website owners limited time to apply the patch.
Historically cyber attackers begin targeting vulnerabilities soon after exploit code becomes public. Once a proof of concept is available malicious actors scan for affected websites and attempt to compromise them quickly.
Administrators who cannot update immediately are advised to deactivate the plugin or take steps to block any harmful content that could be delivered through comments. The most effective solution remains upgrading to W3 Total Cache version 2.8.13 which was released on October 20.
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