The WooCommerce Payment plugin for WordPress is being exploited in the wild of a bug that lets anyone escalate privileges to that of the admin level.
Though a security patch is already available and has been automatically installed, site admins are advised to update the concerned plug-in for better security and scan their site for possible compromises – like rouge admin accounts or suspicious PHP files.
Bug in WooCommerce Plug-in
One tool that makes the WooCommerce suite worth it, is it’s Payments plug-in, which enables any WordPress site to accept card payments easily. This is a needed addition to any online store and WooCommerce is a credible company to rely on. The company’s Payments plug-in has over 600,000 installations on WordPress, making it one of the best tools.
Well, researchers at RCE security warn about a severe flaw in WooCommerce Payments plug-in that can let an attacker gain admin privileges if exploited. All they need to do is to add an ‘X-WCPAY-PLATFORM-CHECKOUT-USER‘ request header and set it to the user ID of the account they wish to impersonate. In this case, the hacker can put the admin’s ID to gain his privileges.
Well, this bug was discovered in March of this year and the developers have released a patched version, 5.6.2, to fix it immediately and since it’s so critical, Automattic has forced the security fix on all WordPress sites the plug-in is installed on. Yet, Wordfence researchers say the attackers are actively exploiting the vulnerable sites in the wild.
They noted a massive campaign targeting over 157,000 sites by Saturday, thus warning site admins to patch, if they have not done so. Before doing so, check for any unusual PHP files or suspicious admin accounts on your site and delete them – as your site is probably compromised and they were planted by hackers. After this, update the WooCommerce plug-in to the latest version available.
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