CVE-2015-4038

WP Membership <= 1.2.3 - Privilege Escalation

2015-05-21 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Unpatched
Affected Plugin: WP Membership
Affected Version: <= 1.2.3
CVSS: 8.8High
Weakness type: CWE-287 · Improper Authentication
CVE: CVE-2015-4038

At a glance

CVE-2015-4038 is a high-severity Improper Authentication vulnerability in the WP Membership WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.2.3. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed May 2015, reported by Panagiotis Vagenas.

Vulnerability Overview

The WP Membership plugin 1.2.3 for WordPress allows remote authenticated users to gain administrator privileges via an iv_membership_update_user_settings action to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php.

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-287: Improper Authentication

Reaching this weakness in WP Membership <= 1.2.3 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 WP Membership yet, so installs running <= 1.2.3 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

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2015-4038 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/5607fffa-341f-4237-b064-00fe2e6c9c9f https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2015-4038

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in WP Membership

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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