The popular WP Customer Reviews plugin for WordPress has recently been discovered to have a critical security issue that could allow an attacker to access sensitive information. Identified as "CVE-2023-4686," this vulnerability affects plugin versions up to and including 3.6.6. In this post, we'll provide an in-depth look at this vulnerability, what it means, and how it might be exploited.

Vulnerability Details

The CVE-2023-4686 vulnerability revolves around the ajax_enabled_posts function in the WP Customer Reviews plugin. When exploited, this vulnerability allows authenticated attackers to extract sensitive data such as post titles and slugs, including those of protected and trashed posts and pages, as well as other post types like galleries.

It is important to understand that an attacker would need to be authenticated to exploit this vulnerability. However, this should not bring a false sense of security, as attackers might be able to create an account with lower privileges to execute the exploit.

Here's a simple example of how an attacker might take advantage of this vulnerability

// URL to exploit the vulnerability
$url = 'https://target-site.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php';;

// Authentication cookie of an authenticated user
$auth_cookie = 'your-authentication-cookie';

// POST data containing the action and nonce
$post_data = 'action=get_enabled_posts&security=nonce-value';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIE, $auth_cookie);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// Parsed JSON response containing sensitive data
$sensitive_data = json_decode($response);

The above code snippet demonstrates how an attacker, once authenticated, might send a crafted POST request to the admin-ajax.php endpoint with a cookie and nonce to obtain the sensitive data.

Original References

The vulnerability was initially reported on Security Week and CVE Details.

For a more technical breakdown of the vulnerability, you can refer to the Official WPScan Vulnerability Database.

Exploit Details

The exploit revolves around gaining access to the sensitive information through the admin-ajax.php endpoint after gaining authentication. Attackers may either use stolen credentials or find other vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting, to create a lower privileged account on the target website.

Mitigation

To protect your website from this vulnerability, ensure that you have updated the WP Customer Reviews plugin to version 3.6.7 or later. It is essential to keep your WordPress installation and all plugins up to date to help prevent any security issues.

Conclusion

CVE-2023-4686 highlights the importance of keeping your WordPress plugins up to date and monitoring security disclosures for those plugins. Sensitive information exposure can lead to further exploitation of your website, so it's crucial to stay vigilant and protect your website and its users from potential attacks.

If you want to stay informed about the latest security news and vulnerabilities related to WordPress, sign up for security alerts, and consider implementing a security plugin to further protect your site.

Timeline

Published on: 11/22/2023 16:15:09 UTC
Last modified on: 11/27/2023 22:09:43 UTC