CVE-2021-25036

All in One SEO 4.0.0 - 4.1.5.2 Authorization Bypass

2021-12-14 00:00
Marc-Alexandre Montpas

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 4.1.5.3
Affected Plugin
All in One SEO – AI SEO Plugin to Boost SEO Rankings & Traffic (Schema, Local SEO, Sitemap & SEO Insights)
Affected Version
4.0.0 – 4.1.5.2
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-287 · Improper Authentication
CVE
CVE-2021-25036
View all All in One SEO – AI SEO Plugin to Boost SEO Rankings & Traffic (Schema, Local SEO, Sitemap & SEO Insights) vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-25036 is a high-severity Improper Authentication vulnerability in the All in One SEO WordPress plugin, affecting versions 4.0.0 – 4.1.5.2. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). The issue is fixed in version 4.1.5.3; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2021, reported by Marc-Alexandre Montpas.

Vulnerability Overview

The All in One SEO WordPress plugin before 4.1.5.3 is affected by a Privilege Escalation issue, which was discovered during an internal audit by the Jetpack Scan team, and may grant bad actors access to protected REST API endpoints they shouldn’t have access to. This could ultimately enable users with low-privileged accounts, like subscribers, to perform remote code execution on affected sites.

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. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-287: Improper Authentication

Reaching this weakness in All in One SEO 4.0.0 – 4.1.5.2 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Improper authentication means the mechanism that proves who a caller is can be satisfied without the secret it was supposed to require.

An attacker authenticates as another user — administrators included — without ever knowing a password, so password policies and login rate limits never come into play. For All in One SEO the fix is 4.1.5.3: builds 4.0.0 – 4.1.5.2 are affected, anything from 4.1.5.3 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 4.1.5.3, 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: All in One SEO 4.1.5.3 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-25036https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/16630c5a-802e-404a-b90b-be7b906345b0https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-25036

Related records

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