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Sunday, January 28, 2024

Critical Bug Found In WordPress Plugin For Elementor With Over A Million Installations

A WordPress plugin with over one million installs has been found to contain a critical vulnerability that could result in the execution of arbitrary code on compromised websites.

The plugin in question is Essential Addons for Elementor, which provides WordPress site owners with a library of over 80 elements and extensions to help design and customize pages and posts.

"This vulnerability allows any user, regardless of their authentication or authorization status, to perform a local file inclusion attack," Patchstack said in a report. "This attack can be used to include local files on the filesystem of the website, such as /etc/passwd. This can also be used to perform RCE by including a file with malicious PHP code that normally cannot be executed."

That said, the vulnerability only exists if widgets like dynamic gallery and product gallery are used, which utilize the vulnerable function, resulting in local file inclusion – an attack technique in which a web application is tricked into exposing or running arbitrary files on the webserver.

The flaw impacts all versions of the addon from 5.0.4 and below, and credited with discovering the vulnerability is researcher Wai Yan Myo Thet. Following responsible disclosure, the security hole was finally plugged in version 5.0.5 released on January 28 "after several insufficient patches."

The development comes weeks after it emerged that unidentified actors tampered with dozens of WordPress themes and plugins hosted on a developer's website to inject a backdoor with the goal of infecting further sites.

Related news

Evolving Logic Until Pass Tests Automatically

Automating the automation is still a challenge, but in some cases it's possible under certain situations.

In 2017 I created logic-evolver, one of my experiments for creating logic automatically or better said evolving logic automatically.

In some way, the computer create its own program that satisfies a set of tests defined by a human.

https://github.com/sha0coder/logic-evolver

This implementation in rust, contains a fast cpu emulator than can execute one million instructions in less than two seconds. And a simple genetic algorithm to do the evolution.

Here we create the genetic algorithm, and configure a population of 1000 individuals, and the top 5 to crossover. We run the genetic algorithm with 500 cycles maximum.
Note that in this case the population are programs initially random until take the correct shape.

An evaluation function is provided in the run method as well, and looks like this:

The evaluation function receives a CPU object, to compute a test you need to set the initial parameters, run the program and set a scoring regarding the return value.

More information

ChopChop - ChopChop Is A CLI To Help Developers Scanning Endpoints And Identifying Exposition Of Sensitive Services/Files/Folders

ChopChop is a command-line tool for dynamic application security testing on web applications, initially written by the Michelin CERT.

Its goal is to scan several endpoints and identify exposition of services/files/folders through the webroot. Checks/Signatures are declared in a config file (by default: chopchop.yml), fully configurable, and especially by developers.

"Chop chop" is a phrase rooted in Cantonese. "Chop chop" means "hurry" and suggests that something should be done now and without delay.

Building

We tried to make the build process painless and hopefully, it should be as easy as:

$ go mod download
$ go build .

There should be a resulting gochopchop binary in the folder.

Using Docker

Thanks to Github Container Registry, we are able to provide you some freshly-build Docker images!

docker run ghcr.io/michelin/gochopchop scan https://foobar.com -v debug

But if you prefer, you can also build it locally, see below:

Build locally

docker build -t gochopchop .

Usage

We are continuously trying to make goChopChop as easy as possible. Scanning a host with this utility is as simple as :

$ ./gochopchop scan https://foobar.com

Using Docker

docker run gochopchop scan https://foobar.com

Custom configuration file

docker run -v ./:/app chopchop scan -c /app/chopchop.yml https://foobar.com

What's next

The Golang rewrite took place a couple of months ago but there's so much to do, still. Here are some features we are planning to integrate : [x] Threading for better performance [x] Ability to specify the number of concurrent threads [x] Colors and better formatting [x] Ability to filter checks/signatures to search for [x] Mock and unit tests [x] Github CI And much more!

Testing

To quickly end-to-end test chopchop, we provided a web-server in tests/server.go. To try it, please run go run tests/server.go then run chopchop with the following command ./gochopchop scan http://localhost:8000 --verbosity Debug. ChopChop should print "no vulnerabilities found".

There are also unit test that you can launch with go test -v ./.... These tests are integrated in the github CI workflow.

Available flags

You can find the available flags available for the scan command :

Flag	Full flag	Description
`-h`	`--help`	Help wizard
`-v`	`--verbosity`	Verbose level of logging
`-c`	`--signature`	Path of custom signature file
`-k`	`--insecure`	Disable SSL Verification
`-u`	`--url-file`	Path to a specified file containing urls to test
`-b`	`--max-severity`	Block the CI pipeline if severity is over or equal specified flag
`-e`	`--export`	Export type of the output (csv and/or json)
	`--export-filename`	Specify the filename for the export file(s)
`-t`	`--timeout`	Timeout for the HTTP requests
	`--severity-filter`	Filter Plugins by severity
	`--plugin-filter`	Filter Plugins by name of plugin
	`--threads`	Number of concurrent threads

Advanced usage

Here is a list of advanced usage that you might be interested in. Note: Redirectors like > for post processing can be used.

Ability to scan and disable SSL verification

$ ./gochopchop scan https://foobar.com --insecure

Ability to scan with a custom configuration file (including custom plugins)

$ ./gochopchop scan https://foobar.com --insecure --signature test_config.yml

Ability to list all the plugins or by severity : plugins or plugins --severity High

$ ./gochopchop plugins --severity High

Ability to specify number of concurrent threads : --threads 4 for 4 workers

$ ./gochopchop plugins --threads 4

Ability to block the CI pipeline by severity level (equal or over specified severity) : --max-severity Medium

$ ./gochopchop scan https://foobar.com --max-severity Medium

Ability to specify specific signatures to be checked

./gochopchop scan https://foobar.com --timeout 1 --verbosity --export=csv,json --export-filename boo --plugin-filters=Git,Zimbra,Jenkins

Ability to list all the plugins

$ ./gochopchop plugins

List High severity plugins

$ ./gochopchop plugins --severity High

Set a list or URLs located in a file

$ ./gochopchop scan --url-file url_file.txt

Export GoChopChop results in CSV and JSON format

$ ./gochopchop scan https://foobar.com  --export=csv,json --export-filename results

Creating a new check

Writing a new check is as simple as :

  - endpoint: "/.git/config"
    checks:
      - name: Git exposed
        match:
          - "[branch"
        remediation: Do not deploy .git folder on production servers
        description: Verifies that the GIT repository is accessible from the site
        severity: "High"

An endpoint (eg. /.git/config) is mapped to multiple checks which avoids sending X requests for X checks. Multiple checks can be done through a single HTTP request. Each check needs those fields:

Attribute	Type	Description	Optional ?	Example
name	string	Name of the check	No	Git exposed
description	string	A small description for the check	No	Ensure .git repository is not accessible from the webroot
remediation	string	Give a remediation for this specific "issue"	No	Do not deploy .git folder on production servers
severity	Enum("High", "Medium", "Low", "Informational")	Rate the criticity if it triggers in your environment	No	High
status_code	integer	The HTTP status code that should be returned	Yes	200
headers	List of string	List of headers there should be in the HTTP response	Yes	N/A
no_headers	List of string	List of headers there should NOT be in the HTTP response	Yes	N/A
match	List of string	List the strings there should be in the HTTP response	Yes	"[branch"
no_match	List of string	List the strings there should NOT be in the HTTP response	Yes	N/A
query_string	GET parameters that have to be passed to the endpoint	String	Yes	`query_string: "id=FOO-chopchoptest"`

External Libraries

Library Name	Link	License
Viper	https://github.com/spf13/viper	MIT License
Go-pretty	https://github.com/jedib0t/go-pretty	MIT License
Cobra	https://github.com/spf13/cobra	Apache License 2.0
strfmt	https://github.com/go-openapi/strfmt	Apache License 2.0
Go-homedir	https://github.com/mitchellh/go-homedir	MIT License
pkg-errors	https://github.com/pkg/errors	BSD 2 (Simplified License)
Go-runewidth	https://github.com/mattn/go-runewidth	MIT License

Please, refer to the third-party.txt file for further information.

Talks

PyCon FR 2019 (The tool was initially developed in Python) - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uVXGUpt7tC7zQ1HWegoBbEg2LHamABIqfDfiD9MWsD8/edit
DEFCON AppSec Village 2020 "Turning offsec mindset to developer's toolset" - https://drive.google.com/file/d/15P8eSarIohwCVW-tR3FN78KJPGbpAtR1/view

License

ChopChop has been released under Apache License 2.0. Please, refer to the LICENSE file for further information.