CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2011-4898

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Jan 30, 2012 | Modified: Aug 07, 2024
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
5 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
LOW

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

Weakness

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Wordpress Wordpress * 3.3.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 0.7 (including) 0.7 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 0.71 (including) 0.71 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 0.72 (including) 0.72 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 0.711 (including) 0.711 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.0 (including) 1.0 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.0.1 (including) 1.0.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.0.2 (including) 1.0.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.2 (including) 1.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.2.1 (including) 1.2.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.2.2 (including) 1.2.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.5 (including) 1.5 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.5.1 (including) 1.5.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.5.1.2 (including) 1.5.1.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.5.1.3 (including) 1.5.1.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 1.5.2 (including) 1.5.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0 (including) 2.0 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.1 (including) 2.0.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.2 (including) 2.0.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.3 (including) 2.0.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.4 (including) 2.0.4 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.5 (including) 2.0.5 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.6 (including) 2.0.6 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.7 (including) 2.0.7 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.8 (including) 2.0.8 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.9 (including) 2.0.9 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.10 (including) 2.0.10 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.0.11 (including) 2.0.11 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.1 (including) 2.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.1.1 (including) 2.1.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.1.2 (including) 2.1.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.1.3 (including) 2.1.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.2 (including) 2.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.2.1 (including) 2.2.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.2.2 (including) 2.2.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.2.3 (including) 2.2.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.3 (including) 2.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.3.1 (including) 2.3.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.3.2 (including) 2.3.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.3.3 (including) 2.3.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.5 (including) 2.5 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.5.1 (including) 2.5.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.6 (including) 2.6 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.6.1 (including) 2.6.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.6.2 (including) 2.6.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.6.3 (including) 2.6.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.6.5 (including) 2.6.5 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.7 (including) 2.7 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.7.1 (including) 2.7.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.8 (including) 2.8 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.8.1 (including) 2.8.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.8.2 (including) 2.8.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.8.3 (including) 2.8.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.8.4 (including) 2.8.4 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.8.5 (including) 2.8.5 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.8.6 (including) 2.8.6 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.9 (including) 2.9 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.9.1 (including) 2.9.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 2.9.2 (including) 2.9.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.0 (including) 3.0 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.0.1 (including) 3.0.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.0.2 (including) 3.0.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.0.3 (including) 3.0.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.0.4 (including) 3.0.4 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.0.5 (including) 3.0.5 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.0.6 (including) 3.0.6 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.1 (including) 3.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.1.1 (including) 3.1.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.1.2 (including) 3.1.2 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.1.3 (including) 3.1.3 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.1.4 (including) 3.1.4 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.2.1 (including) 3.2.1 (including)
Wordpress Wordpress 3.3 (including) 3.3 (including)
Wordpress Ubuntu artful *
Wordpress Ubuntu bionic *
Wordpress Ubuntu cosmic *
Wordpress Ubuntu disco *
Wordpress Ubuntu eoan *
Wordpress Ubuntu groovy *
Wordpress Ubuntu hardy *
Wordpress Ubuntu hirsute *
Wordpress Ubuntu impish *
Wordpress Ubuntu kinetic *
Wordpress Ubuntu lucid *
Wordpress Ubuntu lunar *
Wordpress Ubuntu mantic *
Wordpress Ubuntu maverick *
Wordpress Ubuntu natty *
Wordpress Ubuntu oneiric *
Wordpress Ubuntu precise *
Wordpress Ubuntu quantal *
Wordpress Ubuntu raring *
Wordpress Ubuntu saucy *
Wordpress Ubuntu trusty *
Wordpress Ubuntu upstream *
Wordpress Ubuntu utopic *
Wordpress Ubuntu vivid *
Wordpress Ubuntu wily *
Wordpress Ubuntu xenial *
Wordpress Ubuntu yakkety *
Wordpress Ubuntu zesty *

Extended Description

There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:

Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:

Information exposures can occur in different ways:

It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References