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Unpatched WordPress Flaw Could Allow Hackers To Reset Admin Password

WordPress, the most popular CMS in the world, is vulnerable to a logical vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to reset targeted users’ password under certain circumstances.The vulnerability (CVE-2017-8295) becomes even more dangerous after knowing that it affects all versions of WordPress — including the latest 4.7.4 version.The WordPress flaw was discovered by Polish security researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers last year in July and reported it to the WordPress security team, who decided to ignore this issue, leaving millions of websites vulnerable.

“This issue has been reported to WordPress security team multiple times with the first report sent back in July 2016. It was reported both directly via security contact email, as well as via HackerOne website,” Golunski wrote in an advisory published today. “As there has been no progress, in this case, this advisory is finally released to the public without an official patch.”Golunski is the same researcher who discovered a critical vulnerability in the popular open source PHPMailer libraries that allowed malicious actors to remotely execute arbitrary code in the context of the web server and compromise the target web application.The vulnerability lies in the way WordPress processes the password reset request, for the user it has been initiated.In general, when a user requests to reset his/her password through forgot password option, WordPress immediately generates a unique secret code and sends it to user’s email ID already stored in the database.