CVE-2023-28121

WooCommerce Payments 4.8.0 - 5.6.1 Authentication Bypass and Privilege Escalation

2023-03-23 00:00
mikemyers

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 5.6.2
Affected Plugin
WooPayments: Integrated WooCommerce Payments
Affected Version
4.8.0 – 5.6.1
CVSS
9.8Critical
Weakness type
CWE-288 · Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel
CVE
CVE-2023-28121
View all WooPayments: Integrated WooCommerce Payments vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2023-28121 is a critical-severity Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel vulnerability in the WooPayments WordPress plugin, affecting versions 4.8.0 – 5.6.1. 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 5.6.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed March 2023, reported by mikemyers.

Vulnerability Overview

The WooCommerce Payments plugin is vulnerable to authentication bypass via the determine_current_user_for_platform_checkout function. This allows unauthenticated attackers to impersonate arbitrary users and perform some actions as the impersonated user, which can lead to site takeover.

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-288: Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel

Reaching this weakness in WooPayments 4.8.0 – 5.6.1 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Authentication bypass through an alternate path means the application has a second route to a protected action that skips the checks the primary route performs.

The protection on the main path becomes irrelevant, because the attacker simply uses the route that never asks. For WooPayments the fix is 5.6.2: builds 4.8.0 – 5.6.1 are affected, anything from 5.6.2 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 5.6.2, 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: WooPayments 5.6.2 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-28121https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/41cf57ff-421d-4db2-894f-17f2c4d4b9edhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-28121

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C