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WordPress Cookies Security Bypass Weakness
Secunia Advisory: SA27714
Release Date: 2007-11-21
Popularity: 6,792 views

Critical:
Not critical
Impact: Security Bypass
Where: From remote
Solution Status: Unpatched

Software:Wordpress 1.x
WordPress 2.x

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CVE reference:CVE-2007-6013


Description:
Steven J. Murdoch has discovered a weakness in WordPress, which can be exploited by malicious people to bypass certain security restrictions.

The weakness is caused due to the fact that it is possible to construct the two authentication cookies ("wordpressuser_*" and "wordpresspass_*") from the data in the "users" table.

Successful exploitation allows e.g. logging in as administrator, but requires read access to the "users" table of the database.

NOTE: The weakness is reportedly being exploited in the wild.

The weakness is confirmed in version 2.3.1 and reported in all previous versions down to and including 1.5.

Solution:
Grant only trusted users read access to the "users" table.

Restrict access to the "wp-admin" directory (e.g. with ".htaccess").

Provided and/or discovered by:
Steven J. Murdoch

Original Advisory:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/advisories/wordpress-cookie-auth.txt


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