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WordPress Adminer plugin allows public (local) database login
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David Vaartjes, July 2016

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Abstract
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The Adminer WordPress plugin allows public login to the site's editor.
As a result this allows an attacker to connect to any database running
on the local host or on internal systems which are accessible from the
target WordPress server.

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OVE ID
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OVE-20160728-0001

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Tested versions
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This issue was successfully tested on the Adminer WordPress Plugin
version 1.4.4.

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Fix
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Currently no fix for this issue is available.

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Details
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https://sumofpwn.nl/advisory/2016/wordpress_adminer_plugin_allows_public__local__database_login.html

This issue exists because a publicly accessible interface (Adminer editor) is exposed that can be used by anyone from the web. No login to the WordPress dashboard is required. From git it seems that the Adminer editor component was added early '16.

Since an attacker can also specify the target host:port combination of the database to connect too, this issue can also be used to connect to any (also non WP) databases which are accessible from the target WordPress server.

The script has a measure in place to limit brute-force attacks. Upon 30 connection attempts from a single IP your IP will be blocked for 30 minutes.

The script can be found at the following location:
http://<target>/wp-content/plugins/adminer/inc/editor/index.php

Using Google many sites can be found that have a publicly accessible database login page exposed:
https://www.google.nl/search?q=inurl:/adminer/inc/
Proof of concept

- http://<target>/wp-content/plugins/adminer/inc/editor/index.php
- http://<target>/wp-content/plugins/adminer/inc/editor/index.php?server=10.0.0.1&username=root&db=wordpress&password=root

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Summer of Pwnage (https://sumofpwn.nl) is a Dutch community project. Its
goal is to contribute to the security of popular, widely used OSS
projects in a fun and educational way.