WordPress Remote Admin Password Reset Vulnerability
The password of my WordPress admin account was not valid when I tried to login today. I first thought it was a problem with the LastPass password manager and tried to see if I was still logged into the service.
When I checked my email inbox I noticed that I have received a new password for the account. That was strange since I did not request a new password.
It was not that much of a concern to me as I thought that someone might have used the password reset functionality to reset the password which meant that physical access to the new password was not possible.
A new post appeared on the WordPress discussion list today revealing more details about what happened on that day.
Anyone is apparently able to reset a WordPress password if the email address of the WordPress user is known. All that needs to be done is to point the web browser at http://www.domain.com/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword to reset the password.
The email address of the account holder has to be supplied in the form. WordPress sents a confirmation email first usually to the registered email address to verify the request. This is done to prevent abuse of the system so that passwords do get reset without the actual account owner requesting it.
The vulnerability that was revealed recently manipulates the query to skip this step.
It is not possible to exploit this vulnerability further, which means attackers cannot get access to the user account. All that is possible is to reset the password of the account, which is definitely a nuisance for the account owner.
It can however be used theoretically to reset the password regularly to lock the user or admin out of the WordPress blog.
A temporary fix for the remote admin password reset vulnerability was posted. WordPress administrators need to change one line of code in the wp-login.php file of the WordPress installation to protect their blog from the attack.
Replace
if ( empty( $key ) )
With
if ( empty( $key ) || is_array( $key ) )
It is advised to apply the temporary fix as soon as possible to WordPress installations.
Update: WordPress has fixed the issue in recent versions of the software. It is no longer necessary to implement the patch manually.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.