WordPress before 2.6.2 does not properly handle MySQL warnings about insertion of username strings that exceed the maximum column width of the user_login column, and does not properly handle space characters when comparing usernames, which allows remote attackers to change an arbitrary user's password to a random value by registering a similar username and then requesting a password reset, related to a "SQL column truncation vulnerability." NOTE: the attacker can discover the random password by also exploiting CVE-2008-4107.

Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in wordpress, weblog manager. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

  - CVE-2008-6762     It was discovered that wordpress is prone to an open     redirect vulnerability which allows remote attackers to     conduct phishing attacks.

  - CVE-2008-6767     It was discovered that remote attackers had the ability     to trigger an application upgrade, which could lead to a     denial of service attack.

  - CVE-2009-2334     It was discovered that wordpress lacks authentication     checks in the plugin configuration, which might leak     sensitive information.

  - CVE-2009-2854     It was discovered that wordpress lacks authentication     checks in various actions, thus allowing remote     attackers to produce unauthorised edits or additions.

  - CVE-2009-2851     It was discovered that the administrator interface is     prone to a cross-site scripting attack.

  - CVE-2009-2853     It was discovered that remote attackers can gain     privileges via certain direct requests.

  - CVE-2008-1502     It was discovered that the _bad_protocol_once function     in KSES, as used by wordpress, allows remote attackers     to perform cross-site scripting attacks.

  - CVE-2008-4106     It was discovered that wordpress lacks certain checks     around user information, which could be used by     attackers to change the password of a user.

  - CVE-2008-4769     It was discovered that the get_category_template     function is prone to a directory traversal     vulnerability, which could lead to the execution of     arbitrary code.

  - CVE-2008-4796     It was discovered that the _httpsrequest function in the     embedded snoopy version is prone to the execution of     arbitrary commands via shell metacharacters in https     URLs.

  - CVE-2008-5113     It was discovered that wordpress relies on the REQUEST     superglobal array in certain dangerous situations, which     makes it easier to perform attacks via crafted cookies.

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-262/

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

The Wordpress development team reports :

With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another users password to a randomly generated password. The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit. However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password.

The version of WordPress installed on the remote host is vulnerable to a flaw that would allow any user to reset the password of any other user account.  After resetting the password, the newly reset password would be sent to the email address linked to the account.   

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
44736	Debian DSA-1871-1 : wordpress - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
34181	Fedora 9 : wordpress-2.6.2-1.fc9 (2008-7902)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
34173	Fedora 8 : wordpress-2.6.2-1.fc8 (2008-7760)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
34152	FreeBSD : wordpress -- remote privilege escalation (884fced7-7f1c-11dd-a66a-0019666436c2)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	medium
4648	WordPress < 2.6.2 Administrative Password Reset	Nessus Network Monitor	CGI	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2008-4106

critical

Tenable Plugins

critical

medium

medium

medium

medium