CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-9006

Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Published: Feb 17, 2020 | Modified: Jul 21, 2021
CVSS 3.x
9.8
CRITICAL
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
7.5 HIGH
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

The Popup Builder plugin 2.2.8 through 2.6.7.6 for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL injection (in the sgImportPopups function in sg_popup_ajax.php) via PHP Deserialization on attacker-controlled data with the attachmentUrl POST variable. This allows creation of an arbitrary WordPress Administrator account, leading to possible Remote Code Execution because Administrators can run PHP code on Wordpress instances. (This issue has been fixed in the 3.x branch of popup-builder.)

Weakness

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Popup_builder Sygnoos 2.2.8 (including) 2.6.7.6 (including)

Extended Description

It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.

Potential Mitigations

  • Make fields transient to protect them from deserialization.
  • An attempt to serialize and then deserialize a class containing transient fields will result in NULLs where the transient data should be. This is an excellent way to prevent time, environment-based, or sensitive variables from being carried over and used improperly.

References