Essential WordPress Anti-Spam Plugin Flaws Expose 200,000+ Websites to Distant Assaults

Nov 26, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Web site Safety

Two vital safety flaws impacting the Spam safety, Anti-Spam, and FireWall plugin WordPress may permit an unauthenticated attacker to put in and allow malicious plugins on vulnerable websites and probably obtain distant code execution.

The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2024-10542 and CVE-2024-10781, carry a CVSS rating of 9.8 out of a most of 10.0. They had been addressed in variations 6.44 and 6.45 launched this month.

Put in on over 200,000 WordPress websites, CleanTalk’s Spam safety, Anti-Spam, FireWall plugin is marketed as a “universal anti-spam plugin” that blocks spam feedback, registrations, surveys, and extra.

Cybersecurity

In line with Wordfence, each vulnerabilities concern an authorization bypass problem that might permit a malicious actor to put in and activate arbitrary plugins. This might then pave the way in which for distant code execution if the activated plugin is weak of its personal.

The plugin is “vulnerable to unauthorized Arbitrary Plugin Installation due to a missing empty value check on the ‘api_key’ value in the ‘perform’ function in all versions up to, and including, 6.44,” safety researcher István Márton mentioned, referring to CVE-2024-10781.

Alternatively, CVE-2024-10542 stems from an authorization bypass by way of reverse DNS spoofing on the checkWithoutToken() perform.

Whatever the bypass technique, profitable exploitation of the 2 shortcomings may permit an attacker to put in, activate, deactivate, and even uninstall plugins.

Cybersecurity

Customers of the plugin are suggested to make sure that their websites are up to date to the newest patched model to safeguard towards potential threats.

The event comes as Sucuri has warned of a number of campaigns which can be leveraging compromised WordPress websites to inject malicious code liable for redirecting web site guests to different websites by way of bogus adverts, skimming login credentials, in addition to drop malware that captures admin passwords, redirects to VexTrio Viper rip-off websites, and execute arbitrary PHP code on the server.

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