CVE-2020-35935

Advanced Access Manager <= 6.6.1 - Authenticated Authorization Bypass and Privilege Escalation

2020-08-14 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 6.6.2
Affected Plugin: Advanced Access Manager – Access Governance for WordPress
Affected Version: <= 6.6.1
CVSS: 7.5High
Weakness type: CWE-305 · Authentication Bypass by Primary Weakness
CVE: CVE-2020-35935

View all Advanced Access Manager – Access Governance for WordPress vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2020-35935 is a high-severity Authentication Bypass by Primary Weakness vulnerability in the Advanced Access Manager WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 6.6.1. It carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires an authenticated account. The issue is fixed in version 6.6.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2020, reported by Ram.

Vulnerability Overview

The Advanced Access Manager plugin before 6.6.2 for WordPress allows privilege escalation on profile updates via the aam_user_roles POST parameter if Multiple Role support is enabled. (The mechanism for deciding whether a user was entitled to add a role did not work in various custom-role scenarios.)

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-305: Authentication Bypass by Primary Weakness

The authentication algorithm is sound, but the implemented mechanism can be bypassed as the result of a separate weakness that is primary to the authentication error.

Remediation

Update to version 6.6.2, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. None of that substitutes for the fix: Advanced Access Manager 6.6.2 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Login Security
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-35935 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/5e6de586-5621-4eb2-8150-cb42562d289f https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-35935

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in Advanced Access Manager – Access Governance for WordPress

CVSS Vector

7.5

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityHigh
Privileges RequiredLow
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityHigh
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityHigh

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