Patchstack detailed a high-severity cross-site request forgery flaw, rated 8.8 and not yet assigned a CVE, in the Elementor Website Builder WordPress plugin, which is active on over ten million sites. It affects only versions 4.3.0 and 4.3.1, installed on more than two million sites, and is fixed in 4.3.2. One link opened by a logged-in WordPress user makes that user perform any REST API action their account permits, so an administrator clicking it creates a second administrator account for the attacker on a stock install. The attack needs no JavaScript, submitted form, or attacker-controlled page; the link can be a plain anchor tag in an email, chat, or comment.
WordPress shipped 7.1.1 on September 17 to fix a flaw that pwn.ai calls Click2Shell, where a crafted link opened by a logged-in administrator installs a theme from the official directory with no click. Two parts of WordPress read the link differently, so attacker-added characters steer the admin browser into clicking Install, and the logged-in session supplies the permission and security token. Alone it only installs a real, switched-off theme, but the researchers chained it with a second flaw in the Mobile Repair Zone theme, whose handler fetched and ran remote code during a Customizer preview, reaching server code execution. No in-the-wild abuse is reported.
TrustStrike Labs