Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Incident Response

vBulletin Patches Disclosed Vulnerabilities

vBulletin developers announced on Tuesday that they have patched two recently disclosed vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and delete files from the server.

vBulletin developers announced on Tuesday that they have patched two recently disclosed vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and delete files from the server.

The flaws were disclosed last week by Beyond Security. One of the security holes is a file inclusion issue that affects Windows-based vBulletin installations. It allows an unauthenticated attacker to inject malicious PHP code into a file on the server and “include” that file by manipulating the routestring= parameter in a request, which results in the code getting executed.

The second vulnerability, identified as CVE-2017-17672, is a deserialization issue that can be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to delete arbitrary files and possibly even execute arbitrary code.

Beyond Security said the flaws were reported to vBulletin on November 21, but the developers of the forum software told SecurityWeek they only learned about them last week. By Monday, a patch had already been developed and was being tested.

The vulnerabilities impact versions 5.3.2, 5.3.3 and 5.3.4. Fixes were rolled out on Tuesday with the release of vBulletin 5.3.4 Patch Level 1, 5.3.3 Patch Level 1, and 5.3.2 Patch Level 2. Forums hosted on vBulletin Cloud have been patched automatically.

“Two potential issues have been identified in vBulletin 5.3.2 and higher,” said Wayne Luke, vBulletin Technical Support Lead. “The first affects the template rendering functionality and could lead to arbitrary file deletion. The second allows the possibility of remote file inclusion via the legacy routing system on Windows servers. We have applied fixes for these issues. It is recommended that you apply this patch as soon as possible.”

It’s important that vBulletin forum administrators patch their installations as soon as possible. Malicious actors can quickly start exploiting the flaws in the wild, especially since technical details and proof-of-concept (PoC) code have been made available for both vulnerabilities.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Related: vBulletin Resets Passwords After Server Hack

Related: vBulletin Fixes SQL Injection Vulnerability That Exposes Website Databases

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Data Breaches

LastPass DevOp engineer's home computer hacked and implanted with keylogging malware as part of a sustained cyberattack that exfiltrated corporate data from the cloud...

Vulnerabilities

The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.