Strategic Overview
- Status
- Unpatched
- Affected Plugin
- WPGateway
- Affected Version
<= 3.5- CVSS
- 9.8Critical
- Weakness type
- CWE-288 · Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel
- CVE
CVE-2022-3180
At a glance
CVE-2022-3180 is a critical-severity Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel vulnerability in the WPGateway WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 3.5. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed September 2022.
Vulnerability Overview
The WPGateway Plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in versions up to, and including, 3.5. This allows unauthenticated attackers to create arbitrary malicious administrator accounts.
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 WPGateway <= 3.5 takes no account at all. 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for WPGateway yet, so installs running <= 3.5 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?
This one needs no account at all, which puts it outside what login hardening can reach; WordSec's login security narrows the account-level paths around it, and the firewall is what inspects the request itself. 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
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C