CVE-2016-5835

WordPress Core < 4.5.3 - Revision History Disclosure

2016-06-18 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 3.7.15
Affected Core: WordPress 4.5
Affected Version: 3.7 – 4.5.2 · 10 branches
CVSS: 4.3Medium
Weakness type: CWE-200 · Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
CVE: CVE-2016-5835

At a glance

CVE-2016-5835 is a medium-severity Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor vulnerability in the WordPress 4.5 WordPress release line, affecting 3.7 – 4.5.2 · 10 branches. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). The issue is fixed in version 3.7.15; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed June 2016, reported by John Blackbourn.

Vulnerability Overview

WordPress before 4.5.3 allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive revision-history information by leveraging the ability to read a post, related to wp-admin/includes/ajax-actions.php and wp-admin/revision.php.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed, and no interaction from a victim user.

CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Reaching this weakness in WordPress 4.5 3.7 – 4.5.2 · 10 branches takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Sensitive information exposure means data the application intended to keep internal is returned to a caller who should not be able to see it.

The disclosed data — credentials, tokens, customer records or internal paths — is usually worth more as material for a follow-up attack than as an end in itself. For WordPress 4.5 the fix is 3.7.15: builds 3.7 – 4.5.2 · 10 branches are affected, anything from 3.7.15 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to one of the following versions, or a newer patched version: 3.7.15, 3.8.15, 3.9.13, 4.0.12, 4.1.12, 4.2.9, 4.3.5, 4.4.4, 4.5.3

How does WordSec protect against this?

The fix is the thing that ends this: updating to 3.7.15 is the step that ends it.

Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2016-5835 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/10a811f3-0c5b-4e06-a9bb-338d36d0b5eb https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-5835

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in WordPress 4.5

CVSS Vector

4.3

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredLow
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityNone
AvailabilityNone

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