Cybersecurity researchers have found yet one more crucial safety flaw within the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress that might enable unauthenticated customers to take management of arbitrary accounts.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-44000 (CVSS rating: 7.5), impacts variations earlier than and together with 6.4.1. It has been addressed in model 6.5.0.1.
“The plugin suffers from an unauthenticated account takeover vulnerability which permits any unauthenticated customer to realize authentication entry to any logged-in customers and at worst can achieve entry to an Administrator stage position after which malicious plugins could possibly be uploaded and put in,” Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad mentioned.
The invention follows an in depth safety evaluation of the plugin, which beforehand led to the identification of a crucial privilege escalation flaw (CVE-2024-28000, CVSS rating: 9.8). LiteSpeed Cache is a well-liked caching plugin for the WordPress ecosystem with over 5 million energetic installations.
The brand new vulnerability stems from the truth that a debug log file named “/wp-content/debug.log” is publicly uncovered, which makes it potential for unauthenticated attackers to view doubtlessly delicate data contained within the file.
This might additionally embody person cookie data current inside HTTP response headers, successfully permitting customers to log in to a weak web site with any session that’s actively legitimate.
The decrease severity of the flaw is owing to the prerequisite that the debug function have to be enabled on a WordPress web site for it to achieve success. Alternatively, it may additionally have an effect on websites that had activated the debug log function sooner or later previously, however have didn’t take away the debug file.
It is essential to notice that this function is disabled by default. The patch addresses the issue by shifting the log file to a devoted folder throughout the LiteSpeed plugin folder (“/wp-content/litespeed/debug/”), randomizing filenames, and dropping the choice to log cookies within the file.
Customers are suggested to verify their installations for the presence of the “/wp-content/debug.log” and take steps to purge them if the debugging function has (or had) been enabled.
It is also really helpful to set an .htaccess rule to disclaim direct entry to the log recordsdata as malicious actors can nonetheless instantly entry the brand new log file in the event that they know the brand new filename by the use of a trial-and-error methodology.
“This vulnerability highlights the crucial significance of making certain the safety of performing a debug log course of, what information shouldn’t be logged, and the way the debug log file is managed,” Muhammad mentioned.