Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Risk Management

Websites Hacked via Zero-Day Flaws in WordPress Plugins

Zero-day flaws affecting several WordPress plugins have been exploited by malicious actors to plant backdoors and take control of vulnerable websites.

The attacks have been spotted by Wordfence, a company that specializes in protecting WordPress websites.

Zero-day flaws affecting several WordPress plugins have been exploited by malicious actors to plant backdoors and take control of vulnerable websites.

The attacks have been spotted by Wordfence, a company that specializes in protecting WordPress websites.

The firm’s investigation revealed that attackers had been exploiting previously unknown vulnerabilities in three WordPress plugins. The flaws, described as critical PHP object injection issues, affect the Appointments, Flickr Gallery, and RegistrationMagic-Custom Registration Forms plugins.

Attacks exploiting the zero-day vulnerability involved the creation of a file on targeted websites, but logs only showed a POST request to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php, which made it look as if the file appeared out of nowhere, researchers said.

“This vulnerability allowed attackers to cause a vulnerable website to fetch a remote file (a PHP backdoor) and save it to a location of their choice. It required no authentication or elevated privileges. For sites running Flickr Gallery, the attackers only had to send the exploit as POST request to the site’s root URL. For the other two plugins, the request would go to admin-ajax.php,” Wordfence explained in a blog post.

The developers of the affected plugins were notified and they released updates to address the flaw. The security hole was patched in Appointments 2.2.2, Flickr Gallery 1.5.3 and RegistrationMagic 3.7.9.3.

While the vulnerability is critical, the plugins are only used by roughly 8,000 (RegistrationMagic), 9,000 (Appointments) and 4,000 (Flickr Gallery) WordPress websites.

This means that the number of potentially impacted websites is small compared to other incidents involving WordPress plugins. Wordfence reported last month that it had identified malicious functionality in a plugin present on roughly 200,000 websites.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

While plugin flaws can be dangerous, it’s even more dangerous when attackers exploit zero-day or recently patched vulnerabilities affecting WordPress itself. Tens of thousands of sites were hacked within days after the existence of the weakness came to light in February.

WordPress has been running a bug bounty program since this past spring and it has so far paid out rewards totaling thousands of dollars.

Related: WordPress Rushes to Fix Critical Zero-Day Vulnerability

Related: WordPress Delayed Disclosure of Critical Vulnerability

Related: Nine Vulnerabilities Patched in WordPress

Related: Unpatched WordPress Password Reset Flaw Disclosed

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing 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

Trending

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.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

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...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...

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...

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Vulnerabilities

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