WordPress 3.5.1 Released

The WordPress team just pushed out a new version of WordPress (3.5.1) that has some security bugs fixed. Straight from their release post, these are the security changes:

  1. A server-side request forgery vulnerability and remote port scanning using pingbacks. This vulnerability, which could potentially be used to expose information and compromise a site, affects all previous WordPress versions. This was fixed by the WordPress security team. We’d like to thank security researchers Gennady Kovshenin and Ryan Dewhurst for reviewing our work.
  2. Two instances of cross-site scripting via shortcodes and post content. These issues were discovered by Jon Cave of the WordPress security team.
  3. A cross-site scripting vulnerability in the external library Plupload. Thanks to the Moxiecode team for working with us on this, and for releasing Plupload 1.5.5 to address this issue.

There weren’t many changes in this release, but these are all the modified files:


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WordCamp Las Vegas 2012 – Tony Perez: WordPress Security – Dealing with Today’s Hacks

Here is a great presentation given by Tony Perez our COO in October of 2012 at WordCamp Las Vegas:

W3 Total Cache Implementation Vulnerability

Just in time for Christmas, it was announced on the full disclosure list a security (configuration/implementation) bug on W3 Total cache (W3TC), one of the most popular WordPress plugins.

The issue is connected to the way W3TC stores the database cache (in a public accessible directory). It can be used to retrieve password hashes and other database information.

By default the plugin will store the caches inside /wp-content/w3tc/dbcache/ and if you have directory listing enabled, anyone can browse to yoursite.com/wp-content/w3tc/dbcache/ and download them. The second issue is that even if you don’t have directory listing enabled, it is still possible to guess those directories/files in order to extract the database cache queries and results.

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WordPress 3.5 Released

Update like it’s hot!

Today marks the release of WordPress 3.5 (Named Elvin after jazz drimmer Elvin Jones), a major release this year for the WordPress project.

WordPress 3.5

This release highlights some very significant changes to anything from the JavaScript libraries being used, to a brand new Media Manager. Although there are no security fixes highlighted, there were various bugs fixed along with the newly added features.


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Sucuri SiteCheck Malware Scanner Plugin for WordPress

If you’re a WordPress user, love our free SiteCheck scanner, or already use our free SiteCheck Malware Scanner Plugin for WordPress, we have an update for you.

Sucuri Security - SiteCheck Malware Scanner

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Out-of-date Software Affects Websites Big and Small

Last week we published an article listing some big and popular websites that were leaking information about their users via the Apache server-status page. We also published a full list of sites that had this option enabled on our Labs project: URLFind.org.

On URLFind, we list a lot more details than just the sites that have server-status enabled. You can easily find sites that are running outdated versions of WordPress, Joomla or even vBulletin. We also index sites that are still running PHP 4 (outdated and not supported) and other potentially unsafe configurations and servers.

Message to all webmasters

After we published the blog post with the server-status issue, almost all of the sites got fixed (well, excluding Staples and Ford), which I don’t think they would have without that small push (walk of shame).

We are hoping that by shedding a bit more light to this already publicly exposed dilemma, webmasters will take note and update their sites and servers as soon as they can.

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Is WordPress.com SPAM Campaign Due to Compromise?

*****Updated – 20121019*****

Both Matt Mullenweg and Barry Abrahamson, System Wrangler with Automattic, have confirmed that there was not an environmental compromise and everything was isolated to individual user accounts.

Per their incident handling process they identified a brute force like attack which made use of a list of compromised email / password combinations derived from a third-party application[s].

People often use the same username and password on different sites, even though we all know we shouldn’t. If a password on a smaller site is compromised bad guys try it against the big ones like Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress.com. If anything bad happens to a WP.com user we get in touch with them as soon as possible to assist them. – Automatic.com


At this point it’s unclear of the severity, as WordPress.com has not released anything public, but I would say the odds are not in their favor.

The Hacker News (THN) put out an article this morning titled: 15000 WordPress Blogs Hacked For making Money From Survey.

WordPress.com Spam

Naturally my first reaction was, meh, it’s likely a fluke of some kind, but as I read it I became more suspicious. It all started with this email:

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Dealing with WordPress Malware

A few months back I contributed to a post with Smashing Magazine on the top 4 WordPress Infections, it was released yesterday, and it couldn’t have been at a better time. If any one attended WordCamp Las Vegas you might even find some similarities. Fortunately in the process of preparing for the event and working with the team, we were able to compile a bit more information expanding on the things we originally discussed in the last post. It’s perfect timing for a number of reasons, and will complement this post very nicely.

WordPress Malware
The idea of this post, like many in the past, is to outline and discuss this past weekend’s presentation. In the process, hopefully you take something away. Unfortunately, the presentation was capped off with a live attack and hack, and I won’t be able to include that in this post, but I promise it’s coming.

**Note: If you plan to be at WordCamp Philadelphia 2012 you might be in for some treats, just saying. And if you don’t have it on the calendar, you should.

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WordPress Themes: XSS Vulnerabilities and Secure Coding Practices

As many might imagine, my life revolves around Information Security. If you’re like me, you’re undoubtedly seeing all these new posts talking to insecurities in WordPress themes, specifically a plethora of Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Surprise, surprise, right? Yeah, no, not so much.

WordPress Theme XSS Vulnerabilities

Here are some of the posts I am referring to:


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Careful With Fake jQuery Website – jquery-framework. com

A few days ago we posted in our Labs notes about a Fake jQuery website that is distributing malware. The domain was properly chosen to confuse the end-users ( jquery-framework.com ), since it looks like a valid site.

jquery-framework.com

This is what we were seeing injected on some websites:

<script src="httx://jquery-framework.com/jquery-1.7.1.js..


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