Virsec Security Research Lab Vulnerability Analysis
The Virsec Security Research Lab provides timely, relevant analysis about recent and notable security vulnerabilities.
1.1 Vulnerability Summary
is_blog_installed in wp-includes/functions.php in WordPress before 5.5.2 improperly determines whether WordPress is already installed, which might allow an attacker to perform a new installation, leading to remote code execution (as well as a denial of service for the old installation).
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1.2 CVSS Score
The CVSS Base Score is 9.8 (Critical)
1.3 Affected Version
WordPress before 5.5.2
1.4 Vulnerability Attribution
This issue was reported publicly by Omar Ganiev.
1.5 Risk Impact
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system.
WordPress is used by more than 60 million websites,[5] including 33.6% of the top 10 million websites as of April 2019. WordPress is one of the most popular content management system solutions in use. WordPress has also been used for other application domains such as pervasive display systems (PDS).
The process for exploiting this DOS + RCE attack is explained in detail. That being said, it requires someone with lot of skill to perform this attack.
1.6 Virsec Security Platform (VSP) Support:
Virsec security platform (VSP)-Host monitors processes that are spawned which are not part of a set of whitelisted process. Any attempt to execute new command or unknown binary would be denied by VSP-Host’s Process Monitoring capability.
1.7 Reference Links:
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-28037
- https://wordpress.org/news/2020/10/wordpress-5-5-2-security-and-maintenance-release/
Download the full vulnerability report to learn more about this and other important vulnerabilities.
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