During an internal audit of the All In One SEO plugin, we uncovered an SQL Injection vulnerability and a Privilege Escalation bug.

If exploited, the SQL Injection vulnerability could grant attackers access to privileged information from the affected site’s database (e.g., usernames and hashed passwords).

The Privilege Escalation bug we discovered may grant bad actors access to protected REST API endpoints they shouldn’t have access to. This could ultimately enable users with low-privileged accounts, like subscribers, to perform remote code execution on affected sites.

We reported the vulnerabilities to the plugin’s author via email, and they recently released version 4.1.5.3 to address them. We strongly recommend that you update to the latest plugin version and have an established security solution on your site, such as Jetpack Security.

This week, Jetpack Scan flagged the license file of a premium extension, and the customer reached out to ask us for more information about it. So I put my detective hat on to investigate.

It is not unusual to stumble upon suspicious code that only ended up being an overprotective developer trying to hide code through common obfuscation methods. This is even more common when analyzing license management code. But in this case, it turned out to be something a bit more sinister.

While investigating a security advisory about an arbitrary role change/privilege escalation issue in the HM Multiple Roles WordPress plugin, the Jetpack Scan team discovered that the fix was incomplete and left the plugin still vulnerable.

The issue is fully fixed in version 1.3 of the plugin, and we advise any sites using any earlier version of this plugin to update as soon as possible.

During an internal audit of the woocommerce-currency-switcher plugin, we uncovered a very severe local file inclusion vulnerability. 

This security flaw could enable attackers to leak sensitive information like database credentials, cryptographic keys, and may allow arbitrary code execution in some instances.

We reported the vulnerabilities to the WOOCS team via email last week, and they released version 1.3.7 to fix this issue. If you are using an older version of this plugin, we encourage you to update immediately.

Earlier in 2021, I shared how an attacker could leverage leaked or weak credentials to install fake plugins on a compromised site. Although the plugin featured in that blog post has shown some small changes since it was posted, attackers can upload a variety of malicious software using the same method; so in this article, I’ll share with you another recent example (thanks to Luke Leal for sharing it with me).

During an audit of the Motor theme (full name “Motor – Cars, Parts, Service, Equipments and Accessories WooCommerce Store” by Stockware) for WordPress, we found a number of rather severe vulnerabilities.

These vulnerabilities would allow an unauthenticated attacker complete read access to files on the file system of the site host, and would also allow them to run any PHP scripts found in the file system. We did not identify any upload vulnerabilities in the Motor theme, but paired with other vulnerable plugins this could allow for a complete takeover of the vulnerable site.

We disclosed these vulnerabilities to the theme store who then contacted the theme vendor with our findings. A fixed version of the theme was released as version 3.1 on June 3, 2021. We encourage everybody using this theme to upgrade to the latest version immediately!