Vulnerability Exposes Over 4 Million Sites Using WPBakery

On July 27th, our Threat Intelligence team discovered a vulnerability in WPBakery, a WordPress plugin installed on over 4.3 million sites. This flaw made it possible for authenticated attackers with contributor-level or above permissions to inject malicious JavaScript in posts.

We initially reached out to the plugin’s team on July 28, 2020 through their support forum. After receiving confirmation of the appropriate support channel, we disclosed the full details on July 29, 2020. They confirmed the vulnerability and reported that their development team had begun working on a fix on July 31, 2020. After a long period of correspondence with the plugin development team, and a number of insufficient patches, a final sufficient patch was released on September 24, 2020.

We highly recommend updating to the latest version, 6.4.1 as of today, immediately. While doing so, we also recommend verifying that you do not have any untrusted contributor or author user accounts on your WordPress site.

Wordfence Premium users have been protected against exploits targeting these vulnerabilities since July 28, 2020. Wordfence free users received the same protection on August 28, 2020.

Description: Authenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Affected Plugin: WPBakery
Plugin Slug: js_composer
Affected Versions: <= 6.4
CVE ID: Pending.
CVSS Score: 6.4 Medium
CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
Fully Patched Version: 6.4.1

WPBakery page builder is the most popular page builder for WordPress. It is a very easy to use tool that allows site owners to create custom pages using drag and drop capabilities.

Unfortunately, the plugin was designed with a flaw that could give users with contributor and author level roles the ability to inject malicious JavaScript into pages and posts. This flaw also gave these users the ability to edit other users’ posts. The plugin explicitly disabled any default post HTML filtering checks in the saveAjaxFe function using kses_remove_filters();. This meant that any user with access to the WPBakery builder could inject HTML and JavaScript anywhere in a post using the page builder.

	public function saveAjaxFe() { vc_user_access()->checkAdminNonce()->validateDie()->wpAny( 'edit_posts', 'edit_pages' )->validateDie(); $post_id = intval( vc_post_param( 'post_id' ) ); if ( $post_id > 0 ) { ob_start(); // Update post_content, title and etc. // post_title // content // post_status if ( vc_post_param( 'content' ) ) { $post = get_post( $post_id ); $post->post_content = stripslashes( vc_post_param( 'content' ) ); $post_status = vc_post_param( 'post_status' ); $post_title = vc_post_param( 'post_title' ); if ( null !== $post_title ) { $post->post_title = $post_title; } kses_remove_filters(); remove_filter( 'content_save_pre', 'balanceTags', 50 );

Furthermore, while WPBakery only intended pages that were built with the WPBakery page builder to be editable via the builder, users could access the editor by supplying the correct parameters and values for any post. This could be classified as a general bug as well as a security issue, and is what made it possible for contributors and editors to use the wp_ajax_vc_save AJAX action and corresponding saveAjaxFe function to inject malicious JavaScript on their own posts as well as other users’ posts.

The plugin also had custom onclick functionality for buttons. This made it possible for an attacker to inject malicious JavaScript in a button that would execute on a click of the button. Furthermore, contributor and author level users were able to use the vc_raw_js, vc_raw_html, and button using custom_onclick shortcodes to add malicious JavaScript to posts.

All of these meant that a user with contributor-level access could inject scripts in posts that would later execute once someone accessed the page or clicked a button, using various different methods. As contributor-level users require approval before publishing, it is highly likely that an administrator would view a page containing malicious JavaScript created by an attacker with contributor-level access. By executing malicious JavaScript in the administrator’s browser, it would be possible for an attacker to create a new malicious administrative user or inject a backdoor, among many other things.

In the latest version of WPBakery, lower level users no longer have unfiltered_html capabilities by default, however, administrators can grant that permission if they wish to. In addition, users without the appropriate privileges can no longer edit other users’ posts, access the page builder unless permitted, or use shortcodes that could allow the injection of malicious JavaScript.

Dual Account Control

One strategy to keep your site protected from Cross-Site Scripting attacks against higher-privileged accounts is to use dual accounts. Dual account control uses two accounts for any user that may require administrative capability. This can be done by using one user account with administrative capabilities for admin-related tasks like adding new users and plugins and another user account with editor capabilities used to review and approve author and contributor posts.

Doing so will limit the impact that a Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability may have. When you access a page as a site administrator, any malicious JavaScript that an attacker injects can use administrative only functions like adding a new user or editing a theme file to further infect the site. By using a user account with only editor capabilities while editing, creating, and checking on posts created by lower-level users, an XSS exploitation attempt could be limited, as an attacker can’t successfully add new admin accounts or edit themes through an Editor account.

Especially in cases where many users can access authenticated actions, we recommend using an administrative user account only when you need to perform administrative functions on your site.

Disclosure Timeline

July 27, 2020 – Initial discovery of the vulnerability. We develop a firewall rule and move it into the testing phase.
July 28, 2020 – The firewall rule is sufficiently tested and released to premium users. We make our initial outreach to the WPBakery plugin team.
July 29, 2020 – The WPBakery team responds confirming the appropriate inbox and we send over full disclosure details.
August 21, 2020 – After some follow-up an initial patch is released.
August 26, 2020 – We let the WPBakery team know that there are some additional minor problems missed that require resolution.
August 28, 2020 – Wordfence free users receive the firewall rule.
September 2, 2020 – We follow up to see if the WPBakery team received our last email.
September 9, 2020 – The WPBakery team confirms they received our email and are working on getting an additional patch released.
September 11, 2020 – The WPBakery team releases an additional patch that is not fully sufficient.
September 11 to 23, 2020 – We work together more closely to get an adequate patch out.
September 24, 2020 – Final sufficient patch released in version 6.4.1.

Conclusion

In today’s post, we detailed a flaw in the WPBakery Plugin that provided authenticated users with the ability to inject malicious JavaScript into posts using the WPBakery Page builder. Along with that, we provided some insight on how you can protect yourself against Contributor and Author level vulnerabilities. This flaw has been fully patched in version 6.4.1. We recommend that users immediately update to the latest version available, which is version 6.4.1 at the time of this publication.

As WPBakery is a premium plugin often included as a page builder with numerous premium themes, you may need to double check that any updates are available to you with your theme purchase. Verifying the plugin version number in your plugins dashboard should alert you to the version installed on your site.

Sites using Wordfence Premium have been protected against attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability since July 28, 2020. Sites still using the free version of Wordfence received the same protection on August 28, 2020.

If you know a friend or colleague who is using this plugin on their site, we highly recommend forwarding this advisory to them to help keep their sites protected as this is a significant security update.

The post Vulnerability Exposes Over 4 Million Sites Using WPBakery appeared first on Wordfence.

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