The Rank Math SEO – AI SEO Tools to Dominate SEO Rankings plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to unauthorized access due to a missing capability check on the update_site_editor_homepage function in all versions up to, and including, 1.0.271. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to modify several plugin settings including homepage title, meta description, breadcrumbs label, and social media metadata, which can have severe impact on SEO rankings and display malicious content across all site pages where breadcrumbs are used.
Weakness
The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.
Potential Mitigations
- Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) [REF-229] to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries.
- Note that this approach may not protect against horizontal authorization, i.e., it will not protect a user from attacking others with the same role.
- Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
- For example, consider using authorization frameworks such as the JAAS Authorization Framework [REF-233] and the OWASP ESAPI Access Control feature [REF-45].
- For web applications, make sure that the access control mechanism is enforced correctly at the server side on every page. Users should not be able to access any unauthorized functionality or information by simply requesting direct access to that page.
- One way to do this is to ensure that all pages containing sensitive information are not cached, and that all such pages restrict access to requests that are accompanied by an active and authenticated session token associated with a user who has the required permissions to access that page.
Related Attack Patterns
References
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-rest-helper.php#L75
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-shared.php#L122
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-shared.php#L129
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-shared.php#L339
- https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/3552223/seo-by-rank-math/trunk/includes/rest/class-rest-helper.php
- https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/dd072774-6f85-42de-a9d4-6826703ad839?source=cve