Tag: WPScan Vulnerability Database

SiteLock Still Spreading False Information About the Security of WordPress to Their Customers

Back in September we wrote about how the web security company SiteLock had introduced a new feature that was supposed to warn about vulnerabilities on WordPress websites, but would falsely claim that websites running older WordPress versions had vulnerabilities in them that they didn’t.

This seemed to be caused in part by a fundamental lack of understanding of how WordPress handles security, which involves security fixes being released for older version of WordPress that have the automatic background updates feature (WordPress 3.7 and above). This is something that anyone dealing with hacked WordPress websites should know since part of properly cleaning them involves determining, to the extent possible, how they were hacked and you would need to know what vulnerabilities would exist in a version of WordPress when cleaning it. From everything we have seen SiteLock doesn’t properly clean up hacked websites (and they even use that fact as a reason to upsell their customers), so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising they wouldn’t know this.

It also seems to be caused in part by them not understanding the underlying data source for the vulnerability information, the WPScan Vulnerability Database, as that correctly labels which versions of WordPress are vulnerable to the vulnerabilities (as we will show in a bit).

We know that SiteLock is aware of all of this as they clearly read our post as they filed a DMCA takedown notice to remove an image we had included in the post.

You would think that after becoming aware of this SiteLock would have fixed this, right? Well it turns out 9 months later they are still falsely claiming that WordPress website contain vulnerabilities they don’t.

The other day someone contacted us after they had been told by their web host iPage that they their website had security issues and they should sign up for SiteLock. After doing that they contacted us after seeing our previous post about this issue and thinking that what SiteLock had told them about vulnerabilities on their website wasn’t true.

The website was running WordPress 4.6.6 at the time and SiteLock claimed it had the following medium and high severity vulnerabilities:

Severity: High
Category: csrf
Summary: WordPress 4.2-4.7.2 – Press This CSRF DoS
Description: CSRF DoS vulnerability in WordPress versions 4.2 to 4.7.2 through the Press This functionality.
Severity: Medium
Category: rce
Summary: WordPress 4.3-4.7 – Potential Remote Command Execution (RCE) in PHPMailer
Description: Potential Remote Command Execution (RCE) in PHPMailer used in WordPress versions 4.3 to 4.7.1 can potentially be used to remotely execute commands.
Severity: High
Category: bypass
Summary: WordPress 4.2.0-4.7.1 – Press This UI Available to Unauthorised Users
Description: Authentication bypass vulnerability in WordPress Press This versions 4.2.0 to 4.7.1 allows unauthorized users to access the UI.
Severity: High
Category: csrf
Summary: WordPress 2.8-4.7 – Accessibility Mode Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Description: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) in WordPress versions 2.8 to 4.7 via Accessibility Mode allows unauthorized actions to be performed.
Severity: Medium
Category: bypass
Summary: WordPress 2.8.1-4.7.2 – Control Characters in Redirect URL Validation
Description: Control Characters vulnerability in WordPress versions 2.8.1 to 4.7.2 through the Redirect URL Validation
Severity: Medium
Category: unknown
Summary: WordPress 3.0-4.7 – Cryptographically Weak Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG)
Description: Cryptographically Weak Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) vulnerability in WordPress versions 3.0 to 4.7 in the multisite activation key creates the potential to guess/brute-force the activation key.
Severity: High
Category: xss
Summary: WordPress 3.4-4.7 – Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via Theme Name fallback
Description: Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) WordPress versions 3.4 to 4.7 via Theme Name fallback allows malicious code to be stored on the site.
Severity: High
Category: xss
Summary: WordPress 4.3.0-4.7.1 – Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in posts list table
Description: Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in WordPress versions 4.3 to 4.7.1 through the posts list table.
Severity: Medium
Category: xss
Summary: WordPress 2.9-4.7 – Authenticated Cross-Site scripting (XSS) in update-core.php
Description: Authenticated Cross-Site scripting (XSS) WordPress versions 2.9 to 4.7 via update-core.php allows malicious code to be injected to the page.
Severity: High
Category: xss
Summary: WordPress 4.0-4.7.2 – Authenticated Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in YouTube URL Embeds
Description: Authenticated Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in WordPress versions 4.0 to 4.7.2 allows an attacker to inject malicious code on to the site through YouTube URL Embeds.
Severity: High
Category: xss
Summary: WordPress 3.6.0-4.7.2 – Authenticated Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via Media File Metadata
Description: Authenticated Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in WordPress versions 3.6.0 to 4.7.2 allows malicious code to be injected on to the site via Media File Metadata
Severity: High
Category: sqli
Summary: WordPress 3.5-4.7.1 – WP_Query SQL Injection
Description: In WordPress 3.5 to 4.7.1 WP_Query is vulnerable to a SQL injection (SQLi) when passing unsafe data.
Severity: Medium
Category: unknown
Summary: WordPress <= 4.7 – Post via Email Checks mail.example.com by Default
Description: Post via Email Checks mail.example.com by Default in WordPress version 4.7 and earlier.

Those vulnerabilities don’t exist in WordPress 4.6.6, which can be seen by looking at the relevant entries in the WPScan Vulnerability Database. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples:

For the vulnerability “WordPress 3.0-4.7 – Cryptographically Weak Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG)” the vulnerability was fixed in version 4.6.2:

For the vulnerability “WordPress 3.6.0-4.7.2 – Authenticated Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via Media File Metadata” you can see that it was fixed in version 4.6.4:

It also worth noting here that the severity ratings that SiteLock provides here look to be vastly overstated since none of these vulnerabilities is likely (or has in fact been) exploited on wide scale, which you would expect at least for vulnerabilities rated as being high severity.

iPage isn’t innocent in this, as not only do they get a significant percentage of the price being paid for SiteLock services sold through their partnership, but their parent company also happens to be run by SiteLock’s owners.

You would also think that WordPress might make a point of warning people away from SiteLock since they are profiting off falsely claiming that WordPress websites contain vulnerabilities, but instead they have welcomed them as sponsor and speaker at various WordCamps, WordPress conferences. In fact they thanked them for their “commitment to the WordPress community”:

We’d like to thank each of our 2017 global community sponsors for their commitment to the WordPress community. Their generous contributions support community events like WordCamps and WordPress user groups worldwide.

SiteLock Spreading False Information About WordPress’ Security To Their Customers Through Their Platform Scan for WordPress

A couple weeks ago we had a post about the WordPress security company Wordfence’s scary lack of security knowledge, which something they certainly are not alone in among security companies with a focus on WordPress. Another such company is SiteLock, that in a recent post announcing a new feature that is supposed to warn of known vulnerabilities in WordPress, showed they lack a basic of understanding of how WordPress handles security issues, leading to SiteLock warning their customers of WordPress vulnerabilities that don’t actually exist on their websites.

In the fourth paragraph of the post they say something that would red raise a big red flag from anyone who actually some knowledge of WordPress security:

Vulnerabilities can range from cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection (SQLi), to authorization bypass. Issues are presented with their name, category, severity, a summary of the issue, and a more detailed description. For example, when scanning a WordPress website running v3.9.13, many serious vulnerabilities are found detailed in the scan report.

The reason for the red flag is that WordPress 3.9.13 is the latest version of WordPress 3.9, so that version should have little to no known security vulnerabilities. To understand why that it helps to understand how WordPress handles security updates. Back in WordPress 3.7 a new feature, automatic background updates, was introduced. This allows WordPress to automatically update between minor versions, so a website would automatically updated from 3.9.12 to 3.9.13, but would not automatically update to 4.0. Alongside of that WordPress started releasing security updates for older versions of WordPress that contain that feature, even as they moved on to newer versions of WordPress. So for example when the security release 4.5.3 was put out, so was 3.9.13, with the same fixes.

So while you should be keeping up to date with WordPress, if you are running WordPress 3.7 or above you should still be relatively secure against WordPress vulnerabilities since you would normally be getting those security updates. If you deal with the security of WordPress websites and in particular if you deal with cleaning up hacked websites, this is something you absolutely should know since it plays an important role in the determining the possible sources of the hack. SiteLock does those things, but clearly isn’t aware of this. Which you can tell by screenshot of their scan report warning about a couple of “Critical” severity vulnerabilities in WordPress 3.9.13 that don’t actually exist in that version:

[The following image is missing because SiteLock doesn’t want to you to be able see text they copied from other people’s websites.]

sitelock-false-wordpress-vulnerabilities

For the first, it was fixed in 3.9.8, which includes the same fixes as 4.2.4:

From the announcement post, WordPress 3.9.8 fixes three cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and a potential SQL injection that could be used to compromise a site (CVE-2015-2213).

It also includes a fix for a potential timing side-channel attack and prevents an attacker from locking a post from being edited.

For the second, it was fixed in 3.9.4, which includes the same fixes as 4.1.2:

From the announcement post:

  • A serious critical cross-site scripting vulnerability, which could enable anonymous users to compromise a site.
  • Files with invalid or unsafe names could be upload.
  • Some plugins are vulnerable to an SQL injection attack.
  • A very limited cross-site scripting vulnerability could be used as part of a social engineering attack.
  • Four hardening changes, including better validation of post titles within the Dashboard.

The final paragraph of their post doesn’t show good grasp of the reality of securing WordPress websites:

In WordPress security, knowing you have a vulnerability is half the battle. Taking action to remediate vulnerabilities is the other half. Fortunately, as many WordPressers know, the majority of issues found will likely be resolved by simply updating the WordPress core, plugins and themes. However, most WordPress users don’t regularly check the WordPress.org forums or subscribe to notifications about plugins, so they may not be notified of major security issues that haven’t yet been patched. With the new Platform Scan for WordPress, we are increasing the visibility of security concerns to help you be the most informed WordPress user you can be.

Your focus should be first and foremost on keeping the software on your website up to date, since the reality is that you will not always know if a new version includes a security fix. So knowing about vulnerabilities is much less than “half the battle”. Another problem, we know from running our Plugin Vulnerabilities service, is that even if “regularly check the WordPress.org forums or subscribe to notifications about plugins” you won’t know about many unpatched vulnerabilities out there, as lots of vulnerabilities appear to be known and being exploited by hackers, but no one has been noticing them, until we started actually doing the work needed to find them. So could SiteLock play a similar role? It is possible, but based on their track record and the fact that they look to be just reusing existing vulnerability data (which doesn’t even include many vulnerabilities that we have disclosed that exist in the current versions of plugins) it seems unlikely. If you want to be most informed WordPress user when it comes plugin vulnerabilities then signing up for our service would do that over SiteLock’s.

SiteLock’s post doesn’t say where their data comes from (which raises another red flag), but what is shown in the scan results screenshot in their post it looks they are using data from the WPScan Vulnerability Database and adding in some additional information from the US-CERT/NIST. Considering that we have found that the WPScan Vulnerability Database has some serious quality issues when it comes to their listing of plugin vulnerabilities, SiteLock’s data is likely to also likely to have those issues as well.

We would have placed a comment on their post letting them of the problem with their data, but they don’t allow comments (maybe because they would be inundated with complaints about how they treat their customers).