Secunia Security Advisory - Steven J. Murdoch has discovered a weakness in WordPress, which can be exploited by malicious people to bypass certain security restrictions.
42cda88fe794d3ce1dbca1bed7eba0e9b9f32c3f56de678de7df803d09955997
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2003: 2,700 advisories published
2004: 3,100 advisories published
2005: 4,600 advisories published
2006: 5,300 advisories published
How do you know which Secunia advisories are important to you?
The Secunia Vulnerability Intelligence Solutions allows you to filter
and structure all the information you need, so you can address issues
effectively.
Get a free trial of the Secunia Vulnerability Intelligence Solutions:
http://corporate.secunia.com/how_to_buy/38/vi/?ref=secadv
----------------------------------------------------------------------
TITLE:
WordPress Cookies Security Bypass Weakness
SECUNIA ADVISORY ID:
SA27714
VERIFY ADVISORY:
http://secunia.com/advisories/27714/
CRITICAL:
Not critical
IMPACT:
Security Bypass
WHERE:
>From remote
SOFTWARE:
Wordpress 1.x
http://secunia.com/product/3978/
WordPress 2.x
http://secunia.com/product/6745/
DESCRIPTION:
Steven J. Murdoch has discovered a weakness in WordPress, which can
be exploited by malicious people to bypass certain security
restrictions.
The weakness is caused due to the fact that it is possible to
construct the two authentication cookies ("wordpressuser_*" and
"wordpresspass_*") from the data in the "users" table.
Successful exploitation allows e.g. logging in as administrator, but
requires read access to the "users" table of the database.
NOTE: The weakness is reportedly being exploited in the wild.
The weakness is confirmed in version 2.3.1 and reported in all
previous versions down to and including 1.5.
SOLUTION:
Grant only trusted users read access to the "users" table.
Restrict access to the "wp-admin" directory (e.g. with ".htaccess").
PROVIDED AND/OR DISCOVERED BY:
Steven J. Murdoch
ORIGINAL ADVISORY:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/advisories/wordpress-cookie-auth.txt
----------------------------------------------------------------------
About:
This Advisory was delivered by Secunia as a free service to help
everybody keeping their systems up to date against the latest
vulnerabilities.
Subscribe:
http://secunia.com/secunia_security_advisories/
Definitions: (Criticality, Where etc.)
http://secunia.com/about_secunia_advisories/
Please Note:
Secunia recommends that you verify all advisories you receive by
clicking the link.
Secunia NEVER sends attached files with advisories.
Secunia does not advise people to install third party patches, only
use those supplied by the vendor.
----------------------------------------------------------------------