CVE-2019-15647

WordPress CRM, Email & Marketing Automation for WordPress | Award Winner — Groundhogg < 1.3.5 - Remote Code Execution

2019-04-08 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 1.3.5
Affected Plugin: Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation
Affected Version: < 1.3.5
CVSS: 8.8High
Weakness type: CWE-94 · Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
CVE: CVE-2019-15647

View all Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2019-15647 is a high-severity Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection') vulnerability in the Groundhogg WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.3.5. 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 1.3.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2019.

Vulnerability Overview

The groundhogg plugin before 1.3.5 for WordPress has wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=bulk_action_listener remote code execution.

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-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')

Reaching this weakness in Groundhogg < 1.3.5 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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 Groundhogg the fix is 1.3.5: builds < 1.3.5 are affected, anything from 1.3.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.3.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Groundhogg: 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: Groundhogg 1.3.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Scanner
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2019-15647 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/344b2f80-ea86-4bf0-8ee4-4b5c7b94c34b https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-15647

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation

CVSS Vector

8.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredLow
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityHigh
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityHigh

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