WordPress Advance WordPress Search Plugin Plugin <= 1.2.1 is vulnerable to Broken Authentication
Risks
CVSS 6.5
This vulnerability is highly dangerous and expected to become mass exploited.
Broken Authentication
This can be abused by a malicious actor to perform action which normally should only be able to be executed by higher privileged users. These actions might allow the malicious actor to gain admin access to the website.
This is a general description of this vulnerability type, specific impact varies case by case. CVSS score is a way to evaluate and rank reported vulnerabilities in a standardized and repeatable way, but it is not ideal for CMSs.
Solutions
We advise to mitigate or resolve the vulnerability immediately.
Automatically mitigate vulnerabilities and keep your websites safe
Patchstack has issued a virtual patch to mitigate this issue by blocking any attacks until you have updated to a fixed version.
Update to version 1.2.2 or later.
Update to version 1.2.2 or later to remove the vulnerability. Patchstack users can turn on auto-update for vulnerable plugins only.
Timeline
Early warning sent out to Patchstack customers
27 Sep 2022
Published by Patchstack
29 Sep 2022Patchstack is one of the largest open-source vulnerability disclosers in the world. For example, in 2023 more than 70% of new WordPress vulnerabilities were originally published by Patchstack. This focus on research enables us to deploy vulnerability protection rules faster than anybody else.
Patchstack vPatching auto-mitigates security vulnerabilities even when there's no official patch available. It's the fastest and most effective way to eliminate new security vulnerabilities without sacrificing performance.
Hackers automate attacks against new security vulnerabilities to take over as many websites as they can before users have time to patch and update. The attacks are opportunistic and victims are not chosen - everyone is a target.
We recommend reaching out to your hosting provider for server-side malware scanning or use a professional incident response service. Don't rely on plugin based malware scanners as they are commonly tampered with by malware.
