Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall <= 4.21.96 - Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 4.23.56
- Affected Plugin
- Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall
- Affected Version
<= 4.21.96- CVSS
- 9.0Critical
- Weakness type
- CWE-94 · Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
- CVE
CVE-2024-22144
At a glance
CVE-2024-22144 is a critical-severity Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection') vulnerability in the Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.21.96. It carries a CVSS score of 9.0 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.23.56; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed March 2024, reported by stealthcopter.
Vulnerability Overview
The Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in all versions up to, and including, 4.21.96 due to weak nonce generation combined with missing authorization. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to brute force a valid nonce that can be used to add malware rule and execute code on the server.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, 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-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
Reaching this weakness in Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall <= 4.21.96 takes no account at all. Code injection means input from a request reaches a language construct that evaluates code, so the attacker's text is executed rather than treated as data.
The injected code runs with the web server's privileges, giving the attacker the same access to the database and filesystem as WordPress itself. For Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall the fix is 4.23.56: builds <= 4.21.96 are affected, anything from 4.23.56 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 4.23.56, 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: Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall 4.23.56 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Scanner
- Login Security
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall
- 7.5CVE-2026-39478: Anti-Malware Security… PHP Object Injection
CVE-2026-39478 - 7.2CVE-2026-57691: Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force… Stored XSS
CVE-2026-57691 - 7.2CVE-2022-4327: Anti-Malware Security… PHP Object Injection
CVE-2022-4327 - 7.2Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall <= 4.15.17 XSS
- 6.5CVE-2025-11705: Anti-Malware Security… Authenticated (Subscriber+)
CVE-2025-11705 - 6.1CVE-2022-0953: Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force… Reflected XSS
CVE-2022-0953 - 6.1CVE-2022-2599: Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force… Reflected XSS
CVE-2022-2599 - 6.1CVE-2021-25101: Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force… Reflected XSS
CVE-2021-25101
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C