CVE-2019-15873

ProfileGrid – User Profiles, Memberships, Groups and Communities < 2.8.6 - Remote Code Execution

2018-05-18 00:00
Karim El Ouerghemmi

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.8.6
Affected Plugin
ProfileGrid – User Profiles, Groups and Communities
Affected Version
< 2.8.6
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-94 · Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
CVE
CVE-2019-15873
View all ProfileGrid – User Profiles, Groups and Communities vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2019-15873 is a high-severity Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection') vulnerability in the ProfileGrid WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 2.8.6. 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 2.8.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2018, reported by Karim El Ouerghemmi.

Vulnerability Overview

The profilegrid-user-profiles-groups-and-communities plugin before 2.8.6 for WordPress has remote code execution via an wp-admin/admin-ajax.php request with the action=pm_template_preview&html=<?php substring followed by PHP code.

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 ProfileGrid < 2.8.6 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 ProfileGrid the fix is 2.8.6: builds < 2.8.6 are affected, anything from 2.8.6 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.8.6, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to ProfileGrid: 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: ProfileGrid 2.8.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Scanner
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2019-15873https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/f745652d-12d6-46cd-8599-0a42696cb45ahttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-15873

Related records

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