Strategic Overview
- Status
- Unpatched
- Affected Plugin
- article2pdf
- Affected Version
0.24 – 0.27 · 4 branches- CVSS
- 7.5High
- Weakness type
- CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- CVE
CVE-2019-1000031
At a glance
CVE-2019-1000031 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the article2pdf WordPress plugin, affecting versions 0.24 – 0.27 · 4 branches. It carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed March 2019, reported by Christian Lerrahn.
Vulnerability Overview
A disk space or quota exhaustion issue exists in article2pdf_getfile.php in the article2pdf Wordpress plugin 0.24, 0.25, 0.26, 0.27. Visiting PDF generation link but not following the redirect will leave behind a PDF file on disk which will never be deleted by the plug-in.
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 privileges on the target site, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on availability.
CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Reaching this weakness in article2pdf 0.24 – 0.27 · 4 branches takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Uncontrolled resource consumption means a request can make the server do an amount of work it never bounds, because the size or repetition of the job is taken from the request rather than capped by the code.
A single caller can hold PHP workers, database connections or disk open long enough to slow the site for everyone, without needing any account or any other flaw. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for article2pdf yet, so installs running 0.24 – 0.27 · 4 branches stay exposed until the vendor ships one.
Remediation
No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to article2pdf: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in article2pdf
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