[waraxe-2007-SA#059] - XSS in WordPress 2.3

Author: Janek Vind "waraxe"
Date: 27. October 2007
Location: Estonia, Tartu
Web: http://www.waraxe.us/advisory-59.html

Target software description:

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform
with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.

To run WordPress your host just needs a couple of things:

PHP version 4.2 or greater 
MySQL version 4.0 or greater 

Vulnerabilities: Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in "edit-post-rows.php"

Let's have a look inside "/wp-admin/edit-post-rows.php":

------------>[source code]<------------
<?php foreach($posts_columns as $column_display_name) { ?>
<th scope="col"><?php echo $column_display_name; ?></th>
<?php } ?>
------------>[/source code]<-----------

As we can see, array "posts_columns" is uninitialized and if we execute
this php script directly, then arbitrary value for that variable can be
delivered. This means, that reflective XSS exists here. And of course,
"register_globals" must be "on" for this exploit to be successful.

Proof of concept:

http://victim.com/wp-admin/edit-post-rows.php?posts_columns[]=&lt;script&gt;alert&#40;123&#41;;&lt;/script&gt;

//-----> See ya soon and have a nice day ;) <-----//

How to fix:

Get latest WordPress version 2.3.1:

http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

... and update ASAP :)


Greetings:

Greets to ToXiC, LINUX, y3dips, Sm0ke, Heintz, slimjim100, Chb
and anyone else who know me!
Greetings to Raido Kerna.
Tervitusi Torufoorumi rahvale!

Contact:

come2waraxe@yahoo.com
Janek Vind "waraxe"

Homepage: http://www.waraxe.us/


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