CVE-2022-2437

Feed Them Social – for Twitter feed, Youtube and more <= 2.9.8.5 - Unauthenticated PHAR Deserialization

2022-07-12 00:00
Rasoul Jahanshahi

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.9.8.6
Affected Plugin
Feed Them Social – Social Media Feeds, Video, and Photo Galleries
Affected Version
<= 2.9.8.5
CVSS
9.8Critical
Weakness type
CWE-502 · Deserialization of Untrusted Data
CVE
CVE-2022-2437
View all Feed Them Social – Social Media Feeds, Video, and Photo Galleries vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-2437 is a critical-severity Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in the Feed Them Social WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.9.8.5. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.9.8.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2022, reported by Rasoul Jahanshahi.

Vulnerability Overview

The Feed Them Social – for Twitter feed, Youtube and more plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to deserialization of untrusted input via the 'fts_url' parameter in versions up to, and including 2.9.8.5. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to call files using a PHAR wrapper that will deserialize the data and call arbitrary PHP Objects that can be used to perform a variety of malicious actions granted a POP chain is also present. It also requires that the attacker is successful in uploading a file with the serialized payload.

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 confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-502: Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Feed Them Social <= 2.9.8.5 carries this weakness at fts_url, and reaching it takes no account at all. Deserialization of untrusted data means the application reconstructs objects from input a caller controls, letting the attacker choose which classes get instantiated and what their properties hold.

A workable chain turns deserialization into file writes, deletions or code execution, depending on what the loaded classes do in their magic methods. For Feed Them Social the fix is 2.9.8.6: builds <= 2.9.8.5 are affected, anything from 2.9.8.6 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.9.8.6, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: 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: Feed Them Social 2.9.8.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Scanner
  • Login Security

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-2437https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/50bcea94-b12a-4b31-b0c1-bba834ea9bd0https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-2437

Related records

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