A researcher has disclosed the details of a WordPress vulnerability that can be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to reset a targeted user’s password. The flaw was reported to WordPress months ago, but it still has not been patched.
Security researcher Dawid Golunski, known for finding serious vulnerabilities in MySQL and some popular email-sending PHP libraries, published an advisory on Wednesday detailing a weakness in the WordPress password reset feature.
Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to obtain the password reset link for a targeted WordPress account and change its password. The issue, tracked as CVE-2017-8295, has been classified by Golunski as “medium/high severity.”
The problem, according to the expert, is related to the fact that WordPress uses a variable named SERVER_NAME to obtain the hostname of a server when setting the From/Return-Path header in password reset emails sent to users.
Since the value of this variable is often set using the hostname supplied by the client via the HTTP_HOST header, an attacker can inject an arbitrary domain by sending a specially crafted request to the targeted WordPress website.
In an attack scenario described by Golunski, the attacker sends a specially crafted request to the targeted WordPress site in order to trigger a password reset. Since the hostname in the request is an attacker-controlled domain, the From and Return-Path fields in the password reset email sent to the victim will specify an email address on the attacker’s domain.
Once the targeted user receives the password reset link, there are several methods the attacker can use to obtain it now that the From and Return-Path fields point to their domain.
One possibility, said Golunski, is to get the victim’s email account to stop accepting emails, either via an attack on its DNS server or by sending it large files until the mailbox quota is exceeded. If the email account can no longer receive emails, the password reset email is returned to its sender, which in this case is the attacker’s email account as it is specified in the From and Return-Path fields.
If an autoresponder is enabled on the victim’s email account, the attacker could easily obtain a copy of the password reset email as some autoresponders include a copy of the original message in the automatic reply.
Another option is to send a large number of password reset emails to the victim, which could get them to reply in an effort to find out why they are getting so many messages. The reply, which likely includes the password reset link, goes to the attacker.
According to Golunski, the vulnerability affects all versions of WordPress, including 4.7.4, released two weeks ago. The researcher said he reported the security hole to WordPress’ security team several times since July 2016, and decided to make his findings public after no progress was made.
Until a patch is released, Golunski has proposed a temporary solution. Users have also discussed possible mitigations and workarounds on Reddit.
SecurityWeek has reached out to WordPress for comment and will update this article if they respond. It’s possible that WordPress developers see this as a low risk issue given that an attack would not work against websites hosted on shared servers, and considering that obtaining the password reset link may not be easy.
Related: Many WordPress Sites Hacked via Recently Patched Flaw