Over 100K+ WordPress sites using PageLayer plugin exposed to hack

Two security flaws in the PageLayer WordPress plugin can be exploited to potentially wipe the contents or take over WordPress sites.

Security experts from WordFence discovered two high severity security vulnerabilities in the PageLayer WordPress plugin that could potentially allow attackers to wipe the contents or take over WordPress sites using vulnerable plugin versions.

PageLayer is a WordPress page builder plugin, it is very easy to use and actually has over 200,000 active installations according to numbers available on its WordPress plugins repository entry.

The vulnerabilities were reported to PageLayer’s developer by the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team on April 30 and were patched with the release of version 1.1.2 on May 6.

One vulnerability could allow an authenticated user with subscriber-level and above permissions to update and modify posts.

“One flaw allowed any authenticated user with subscriber-level and above permissions the ability to update and modify posts with malicious content, amongst many other things,” reads the post published by Wordfence.

The second vulnerability could allow attackers to forge a request on behalf of a site’s administrator to change the plugin settings allowing to inject malicious Javascript.

Both vulnerabilities are the result of unprotected AJAX actions, nonce disclosure, and a lack of Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection. An attacker could exploit the vulnerabilities to inject malicious JavaScript code, alter the pages of the site, create rogue admin accounts, redirect site visitors to malicious sites, and exploit a site’s user’s browser to compromise their computer.

WordFence experts reported the issue to PageLayer’s developers on April 30 and both were addressed with the release of version 1.1.2 on May 6.

Developers implemented permissions checks on all of the sensitive functions that could allow to change the site and reconfigured the plugin to create separate nonces for the public and administrative areas of a WordPress site.

At the time of writing, more than a hundred thousand WordPress sites still use vulnerable versions of PageLayer plugin.

When it comes to WordPress attacks involving the exploitation of vulnerabilities, malicious actors usually target unpatched plugins, for this reason, it is essential to keep them up to date.

I believe it is very important to protect WordPress install with dedicated solutions, I’m currently using WordFence solution, the company provided with a license to evaluate the premium features.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – PageLayer, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.