Gmedia Photo Gallery <= 1.6.4 - Denial of Service

2015-05-27 00:00
Chad Seaman

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.6.5
Affected Plugin
Gmedia Photo Gallery
Affected Version
< 1.6.5
CVSS
7.5High
Weakness type
CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CVE
CVE pending
View all Gmedia Photo Gallery vulnerabilities

At a glance

This record tracks a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the Gmedia Photo Gallery WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.6.5. It carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.6.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2015, reported by Chad Seaman.

Vulnerability Overview

The Gmedia Photo Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Denial of Service in versions up to, and including, 1.6.4. This is due to improper redirect handling. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to send requests that recursively call 301 redirects, rendering the server unavailable.

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 Gmedia Photo Gallery < 1.6.5 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. For Gmedia Photo Gallery the fix is 1.6.5: builds < 1.6.5 are affected, anything from 1.6.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.6.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Gmedia Photo Gallery: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Gmedia Photo Gallery 1.6.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/a161bd23-0b82-49ef-b3cc-a117823ec8a7

Related records

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