Target Industry
Indiscriminate, opportunistic targeting.
Overview
A critical security vulnerability (CVE-2024-6386, CVSS 9.9) has been uncovered in the widely adopted WPML plugin for WordPress, potentially putting more than one million websites at risk of full compromise.
Impact
Successful exploitation of CVE-2024-6386 permits authenticated users with post editor access to execute malicious code remotely on the server, potentially leading to serious consequences such as data breaches, website defacement, and the installation of backdoors for future attacks.
Vulnerability Detection
The plugin maintainers have released patches pertaining to the security flaw for the respective product versions. As such, previous versions are vulnerable to the potential exploits.
Affected Products
All versions of the WPML WordPress multilingual plugin before 4.6.13.
Containment, Mitigations & Remediations
It is highly recommended that all organisations run the relevant patches as soon as possible.
Indicators of Compromise
No indicators of compromise (IoCs) are available currently.
Threat Landscape
CVE-2024-6386 has added a new layer of complexity to the threat landscape for WordPress websites globally. The potential impact of this vulnerability is significantly high due to the wider user base of the WPML multilingual plugin which currently has over one million active installations.
This vulnerability underscores the broader trend where attackers are increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities in popular third-party plugins to gain unauthorised access.
Threat Group
No attribution to specific threat actors or groups has been identified at the time of writing.
Mitre Methodologies
Tactic:
– TA0002 – Execution
Common Weakness Enumeration:
– CWE-1336 – Improper Neutralization of Special Elements Used in a Template Engine
Further Information
Intelligence Terminology Yardstick
