AMP for WP <= 1.1.18 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Arbitrary Shortcode Execution via Author Biographical Info

The The AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary shortcode execution in all versions up to, and including, 1.1.18. This is due to the software allowing users to execute an action that does not properly validate a value before running do_shortcode. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with custom-level access and above, to execute arbitrary shortcodes. The vulnerable output block is gated by the 'ampforwp-cat-description' setting, which is enabled by default, meaning the vast majority of installations are affected without any additional configuration change.

An attacker needs Subscriber access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. Classes like this one can leave something behind, so the staged malware scanner is the second half: it looks for dropped files and modified code rather than for the request that created them. None of that substitutes for the fix: AMP for WP 1.1.19 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

• Firewall
• Scanner
• Alerts