One of the things we do during security reviews of WordPress plugins is to check if .php files that are not intended to be directly accessed are protected against direct access of them. The lack of that usually makes no difference, but it is an easy way to avoid or limit vulnerabilities, like the local file inclusion (LFI) vulnerability our proactive monitoring of changes made to plugins in the Plugin Directory to try to catch serious vulnerabilities caught in the plugin Revamp CRM for WooCommerce.

The possibility of this vulnerability is also flagged by our Plugin Security Checker, so you can check plugins you use to see if they might have similar issues with that tool.

The vulnerability isn’t hard to understand as the in the file /admin/partials/tabs/notices.php the value of user input is used to determine what file to include and through directory traversal any file with a .php extension can be included instead of the intended files:

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<?php if(isset($_GET['error_notice']) && file_exists(__DIR__.'/errors/'.$_GET['error_notice'].'.php')): ?>
    <?php include(__DIR__.'/errors/'.$_GET['error_notice'].'.php'); ?>
<?php endif; ?>
 
<?php if(isset($_GET['success_notice']) && file_exists(__DIR__.'/success/'.$_GET['success_notice'].'.php')): ?>
    <?php include(__DIR__.'/success/'.$_GET['success_notice'].'.php'); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

While there still would be a more limited vulnerability there if direct access was restricted, it would be more difficult to exploited.

Due to the moderators of the WordPress Support Forum’s continued inappropriate behavior we are full disclosing vulnerabilities in protest until WordPress gets that situation cleaned up, so we are releasing this post and then leaving a message about that for the developer through the WordPress Support Forum. You can notify the developer of this issue on the forum as well. Hopefully the moderators will finally see the light and clean up their act soon, so these full disclosures will no longer be needed (we hope they end soon). You would think they would have already done that, but considering that they believe that having plugins, which have millions installs, remain in the Plugin Directory despite them knowing they are vulnerable is “appropriate action”, something is very amiss with them (which is even more reason the moderation needs to be cleaned up).

Update: To clear up the confusion where developers claim we hadn’t tried to notify them through the Support Forum (while at the same time moderators are complaining about us doing just that), here is the message we left for this vulnerability:

Is It Fixed?

If you are reading this post down the road the best way to find out if this vulnerability or other WordPress plugin vulnerabilities in plugins you use have been fixed is to sign up for our service, since what we uniquely do when it comes to that type of data is to test to see if vulnerabilities have really been fixed. Relying on the developer’s information, can lead you astray, as we often find that they believe they have fixed vulnerabilities, but have failed to do that.

Proof of Concept

The following proof of concept will cause a file named test.php in the root directory of the WordPress installation to be included.

Make sure to replace “[path to WordPress]” with the location of WordPress.

http://[path to WordPress]/wp-content/plugins/revampcrm-woocommerce/admin/partials/tabs/notices.php?error_notice=../../../../../../../test

Concerned About The Security of the Plugins You Use?