Recently I was looking at the Custom Field Suite plugin. I’d never used it before and as always before using it I had to quickly go through the code to find an obvious security issues.

The frequent offender AJAX jumped out at me. Luckily this is not the ‘nopriv’ type, so an attacker would have to have an account on the WordPress site, but any basic account will work.

• Import custom fields
• Export custom fields
• Search for posts by title (via includes/fields/ajax.php:search_posts() )

The only AJAX function that was secured was ‘reset’ which would remove everything CFS related from the database and deactivate the plugin.

With all the awesome stuff that CFS can do, I’m sure an attacker could find something fun to do once they can export your setup and re-import it.

Matt was quick to respond and get a new version out there. Here is the Changelog. I recommend everyone update immediately.

Timeline

• 3/3/2015 12:45pm Initial disclosure email
• 3/3/2015 12:59pm Response and issue fixed in github.com
• 3/4/2015 Updated version (2.4.1) released on wordpress.org

I was looking for a WordPress plugin that would add some Twitter functionality to my website last week. I ran across Tweet Wheel from Nerd Cow (awesome name BTW!)

I personally can’t use a plugin that I haven’t at least done a quick inspection on the code so I took a look and saw a minor AJAX issue. One that wouldn’t even stop me from using the code unfixed in this specific case, because nobody besides me has access to the site.

Props to Thomasz Lisiecki for taking security seriously and getting an updated version out right away, even on such a minor issue. Changelog posted here

Fortunately, none of the actions are ‘nopriv’ so you at least require a valid WordPress user account to use the functionality.

Of all of the actions, this was the worst and it is pretty minor. The result would just be spamming Twitter with the same tweets over and over. Without further access you can’t even adjust what the Tweet says.

Timeline

• 3/1/2015 11:43am Initial disclosure email sent
• 3/1/2015 11:46am Reply received
• 3/4/2015 Plugin updated on wordpress.org