CVE-2020-36832

Indeed Membership Pro 7.3 - 8.6 - Authentication Bypass

2020-02-06 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 8.6.1
Affected Plugin: Indeed Membership Pro
Affected Version: 7.3 – < 8.6.1
CVSS: 9.8Critical
Weakness type: CWE-287 · Improper Authentication
CVE: CVE-2020-36832

View all Indeed Membership Pro vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2020-36832 is a critical-severity Improper Authentication vulnerability in the Indeed Membership Pro WordPress plugin, affecting versions 7.3 – < 8.6.1. 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 8.6.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed February 2020, reported by Noman Riffat.

Vulnerability Overview

The Ultimate Membership Pro plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Authentication Bypass in versions between, and including, 7.3 to 8.6. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to login as any user, including the site administrator with a default user ID of 1, via the username or user ID.

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-287: Improper Authentication

Reaching this weakness in Indeed Membership Pro 7.3 – < 8.6.1 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Improper authentication means the mechanism that proves who a caller is can be satisfied without the secret it was supposed to require.

An attacker authenticates as another user — administrators included — without ever knowing a password, so password policies and login rate limits never come into play. For Indeed Membership Pro the fix is 8.6.1: builds 7.3 – < 8.6.1 are affected, anything from 8.6.1 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 8.6.1, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. None of that substitutes for the fix: Indeed Membership Pro 8.6.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Login Security
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-36832 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/a5341bbd-55bd-41ad-b5d1-d6b56c141277 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-36832

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in Indeed Membership Pro

CVSS Vector

9.8

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

Base

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

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