A flaw in a WordPress anti-spam plugin with over 200,000 installations permits rogue plugins to be put in on affected web sites. Safety researchers rated the vulnerability 9.8 out of 10, reflecting the excessive stage of severity decided by safety researchers.
Screenshot Of CleanTalk Vulnerability Severity Score
CleanTalk Anti-Spam WordPress Plugin Vulnerability
A extremely rated anti-spam firewall with over 200,000 installations was discovered to have an authentication bypass vulnerability that permits attackers to achieve full entry to web sites with out offering a username or password. The flaw lets attackers add and set up any plugin, together with malware, granting them full management of the positioning.
The flaw within the Spam safety, Anti-Spam, FireWall by CleanTalk plugin, was pinpointed by safety researchers at Wordfence as brought on by reverse DNS spoofing. DNS is the system that turns an IP handle to a site title. Reverse DNS spoofing is the place an attacker manipulates the system to indicate that it’s coming from a unique IP handle or area title. On this case the attackers can trick the Ant-Spam plugin that the malicious request is coming from the web site itself and since that plugin doesn’t have a verify for that the attackers acquire unauthorized entry.
This vulnerability is categorized as: Lacking Authorization. The Frequent Weak point Enumeration (CWE) web site defines that as:
“The product doesn’t carry out an authorization verify when an actor makes an attempt to entry a useful resource or carry out an motion.”
Wordfence explains it like this:
“The Spam safety, Anti-Spam, FireWall by CleanTalk plugin for WordPress is susceptible to unauthorized Arbitrary Plugin Set up attributable to an authorization bypass through reverse DNS spoofing on the checkWithoutToken operate in all variations as much as, and together with, 6.43.2. This makes it attainable for unauthenticated attackers to put in and activate arbitrary plugins which might be leveraged to attain distant code execution if one other susceptible plugin is put in and activated.”
Suggestion
Wordfence recommends customers of the affected plugin to replace to model 6.44 or larger.
Learn the Wordfence advisory:
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