Hi, what are you looking for?
A critical vulnerability in the Houzez premium WordPress theme and plugin has been exploited in the wild.
By
Flipboard
Reddit
Pinterest
Whatsapp
Whatsapp
Email

A critical vulnerability affecting the Houzez premium WordPress theme has been exploited in the wild, WordPress security company Patchstack warned on Monday.
Houzez is a premium theme for the real estate industry, with more than 35,000 sales on ThemeForest. It allows agencies to easily manage content and listings.
Patchstack CTO Dave Jong discovered recently that the Houzez theme and its associated Houzez Login Register plugin are impacted by a critical vulnerability that can allow an unauthenticated attacker to hack WordPress websites.

“The theme itself provides registration functionality (must be turned on in the settings) which also allows the user to provide the user role they want to sign up with. Unfortunately, this could be set to administrator to instantly get administrator privileges on the WordPress site,” Jong explained in a blog post.  
The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-26009 in the Houzez plugin and CVE-2023-26540 in the theme. The vendor was informed about the security hole and patched it with the release of versions 2.6.4 (plugin) and 2.7.2 (theme).
Patchstack has been seeing attempts to exploit the vulnerability in the wild, and Jong told SecurityWeek that both the theme and the plugin have been targeted. However, the plugin seems to be targeted more than the theme — it’s unclear why.
According to Jong, an attacker looking to exploit the vulnerability needs to visit the targeted website, grab a nonce token associated with CSRF protection, and then send a maliciously crafted request to the account registration endpoint provided by the Houzez theme or plugin.
Patchstack could not determine what the attackers are hoping to achieve by hacking websites through the Houzez vulnerability because its products block the exploitation attempts.

“However, it is safe to assume that if a site is exploited with this vulnerability and the attacker is logged in with administrator privileges, they are likely to upload a malicious plugin which contains a backdoor,” Jong explained. “This backdoor may perform actions such as listening for commands to be executed on a future date, inject advertisements into the website or redirect traffic to another malicious site.”
The expert added, “These kinds of vulnerabilities tend to be exploited the most as it requires no authentication and it instantly gives the malicious actor access to an account with administrator privileges. Vulnerabilities that require multiple steps or a much higher initial privilege do not tend to be exploited very often as the success rate tends to be lower and it requires much more time and processing power on top of the fact that they don’t tend to give the malicious actor access to write files onto the filesystem of the website.”
WordPress website owners and administrators using the Houzez theme should ensure that their installation is patched to prevent malicious exploitation. 
Related: Critical Vulnerability in Premium Gift Cards WordPress Plugin Exploited in Attacks
Related: Vulnerability in BackupBuddy Plugin Exploited to Hack WordPress Sites

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.
SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.
Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.
Sharing threat information and cooperating with other threat intelligence groups helps to strengthen customer safeguards and boosts the effectiveness of the cybersecurity sector overall. (Derek Manky)
Securing APIs is a noble, though complex journey. Security teams can leverage these 10 steps to help secure their APIs. (Joshua Goldfarb)
While silos pose significant dangers to an enterprise’s cybersecurity posture, consolidation serves as a powerful solution to overcome these risks, offering improved visibility, efficiency, incident response capabilities, and risk management. (Matt Wilson)
The need for cyber resilience arises from the growing realization that traditional security measures are no longer enough to protect systems, data, and the network from compromise. (Torsten George)
Signing code is very important to defend against supply chain attacks, but it’s also one of the most cumbersome to implement for internal development. (Matt Honea)
Flipboard
Reddit
Pinterest
Whatsapp
Whatsapp
Email
Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher…
OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an…
The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be…
The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.
Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.
A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car…
Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.
A vulnerability affecting Dahua cameras and video recorders can be exploited by threat actors to modify a device’s system time.
Got a confidential news tip? We want to hear from you.
Reach a large audience of enterprise cybersecurity professionals
Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Daily Briefing and get the latest content delivered to your inbox.
Copyright © 2023 SecurityWeek ®, a Wired Business Media Publication. All Rights Reserved.

source