A vulnerability addressed recently in the WPvivid Backup Plugin could be exploited to obtain all files of a WordPress website, web security company WebARX reveals.
WPvivid Backup Plugin is a free and open-source plugin that allows users to easily backup, migrate, and restore their WordPress installations to new hosts, or send backups to remote storage. The plugin has over 40,000 active installations.
WebARX discovered that wp_ajax actions in the plugin were missing proper authorization checks and nonce checks, which could lead to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. The wp_ajax_wpvivid_add_remote action was impacted the most.
According to WebARX, the weakness can be abused by any user, regardless of their role, “to add a new storage location and set it as the default backup location.”
Thus, the next time the plugin runs, it would upload the backup to the new location. This could be abused by an authenticated attacker to set the plugin to send the backup to an attacker-controlled location, which would result in the website’s database and other files being sent to the attacker.
In addition, WebARX told SecurityWeek, the CSRF vulnerability “makes it possible for an attacker (outside the WordPress site) to force an admin user to execute an unwanted admin action, which in this case would be any of the admin actions related to this plugin.”
The security bug was discovered on February 28 and reported to the developer of the plugin on the same day. A patched version of WPvivid Backup Plugin was released on March 17.
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