VIR Vulnerability Intelligence Relay

CVE-2011-4898

medium
Published 2012-01-30 · Modified 2026-04-29
💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation
CVSS v3
—
CVSS v4 NEW
—
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
6.0

Description

wp-admin/setup-config.php in the installation component in WordPress 3.3.1 and earlier generates different error messages for requests lacking a dbname parameter depending on whether the MySQL credentials are valid, which makes it easier for remote attackers to conduct brute-force attacks via a series of requests with different uname and pwd parameters. NOTE: the vendor disputes the significance of this issue; also, it is unclear whether providing intentionally vague error messages during installation would be reasonable from a usability perspective

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA
—

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 with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-18417 webapps php verified
Trustwave's SpiderLabs · 2012-01-25

WordPress Core 3.3.1 - Multiple Vulnerabilities

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

OS impact
debian Debian Affected 5 releases
VersionStatusFixed in
trixie Affected —
sid Affected —
forky Affected —
bullseye Affected —
bookworm Affected —

Application impact
VendorProductVersionsFixed
wordpress wordpresswordpress{"endIncluding":"3.3.1"}
wordpress wordpresswordpress0.7
wordpress wordpresswordpress0.71
wordpress wordpresswordpress0.72
wordpress wordpresswordpress0.711
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.0
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.0.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.0.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.2.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.2.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.5
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.5.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.5.1.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.5.1.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress1.5.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.4
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.5
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.6
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.7
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.8
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.9
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.10
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.0.11
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.1.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.1.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.1.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.2.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.2.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.2.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.3.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.3.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.3.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.5
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.5.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.6
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.6.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.6.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.6.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.6.5
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.7
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.7.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.8
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.8.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.8.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.8.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.8.4
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.8.5
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.8.6
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.9
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.9.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress2.9.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.0
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.0.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.0.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.0.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.0.4
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.0.5
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.0.6
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.1.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.1.2
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.1.3
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.1.4
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.2.1
wordpress wordpresswordpress3.3

References

CWEs

CWE-200

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.