A critical SQL injection vulnerability in the LayerSlider plugin can be exploited to extract sensitive information from website databases, WordPress security firm Defiant warns.
A WordPress slider plugin with more than one million active installations, LayerSlider provides users with visual web content editing, digital visual effects, and graphic design capabilities in a single solution.
The critical issue, tracked as CVE-2024-2879 (CVSS score of 9.8), exists because the plugin’s slider popup markup query functionality has been insecurely implemented, allowing attackers to inject malicious SQL queries.
According to Defiant’s Wordfence team, due to “insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query,” an unauthenticated attacker can append SQL queries to existing queries and extract information such as password hashes.
Wordfence also explains that an attacker would need to take a time-based blind approach to obtain the sensitive information.
The method, which requires the use of specific statements and of a sleep command, is frequently used to extract information from databases using SQL injections.
CVE-2024-2879, Wordfence says, was reported through its bug bounty program. The reporting researcher received a $5,500 reward for the finding.
Wordfence reported the flaw to the plugin’s maintainers on March 25. LayerSlider version 7.10.1 was released on March 27 to address the vulnerability.
The bug impacts versions 7.9.11 and 7.10.0 of the plugin. Users are advised to update their installations as soon as possible.
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