Portable phpMyAdmin <= 1.5.0 - Authentication Bypass
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Unpatched
- Affected Plugin
- Portable phpMyAdmin
- Affected Version
<= 1.5.0- CVSS
- 9.1Critical
- Weakness type
- CWE-287 · Improper Authentication
- CVE
CVE-2013-4462
At a glance
CVE-2013-4462 is a critical-severity Improper Authentication vulnerability in the Portable phpMyAdmin WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.5.0. It carries a CVSS score of 9.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed October 2013, reported by Anant Shrivastava (anantshri).
Vulnerability Overview
WordPress Portable phpMyAdmin Plugin version 1.5.0 and below has an authentication bypass vulnerability.
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.
CWE-287: Improper Authentication
Reaching this weakness in Portable phpMyAdmin <= 1.5.0 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Portable phpMyAdmin yet, so installs running <= 1.5.0 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.
Remediation
No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.
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. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in Portable phpMyAdmin
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