Survey Finds Most WordPress Blogs Vulnerable

BlogSecurity writes "Security analyst David Kierznowski shocked bloggers yesterday with a survey showing that 49 out of the 50 WordPress blogs he checked seem to be running exploitable versions of the widely used software. He said, 'The main concern here is the lack of security awareness amongst bloggers with a non-technical background, and even those with a technical background.' Mr Kierznowski also uncovered recent vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins that ship by default with the software, adding: 'WordPress users developing plugins must be aware of the security functions that WordPress supports, and ensure that these functions are used in their code.'"

self-updating

[dr_hooch]

Maybe Wordpress could offer tools to help users better manage updates. Firefox does a great job these days.

Time for web applications to grow up

[Bogtha]

I think it's about time web applications like WordPress included an update service. Put update notifications into an Atom feed pointing to tarballs incorporating an update script, patches, etc, and label them as security/minor/major. Have the system periodically retrieve them, automatically apply the security updates, and prompt the admin next time he logs in to apply the others.

The only difficulty is that the developers need to have proper release management. No more bundling security fixes into whatever the latest development version is. No more releasing updates that fiddle with styles at the same time as fixing serious bugs. I don't think that's feasible for many web applications, but it's certainly achievable for bigger projects like Wordpress.

I can't think of any web application that does this already off the top of my head. Does anybody know of any projects doing this?

Re:irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there really a problem if he's running his site on a non-vulnerable version? He's merely pointing out that there are a large number of Wordpress-powered sites out there that are vulnerable. Not ironic in the slightest.

People run old software? Really?

[madsheep]

This will sort of mirror what I've responded with on Full Disclosure. The first issue is that there really are not any details on this "survey" that was done. I am pretty sure I could conduct a survey that had 1000 WordPress blogs where only 1 of them was a vulnerable version. I am not saying there aren't plenty of older/vulnerable versions out there, but I think you get the point. The second issue is that relying on your extraction of a version number does not mean it's actually vulnerable. Patches or other mitigations could be in place.

So if it's news to you that people run old and/or vulnerable software, then this might be something new. Otherwise it's just what I would expect.

Re:Wordpress - a correction

[cweditor]

Just for the record, as far as I can tell, Wordpress 2.2 was not a security fix. It includes new features and addresses bugs, but I looked through the list of tickets closed in the release of 2.2 and did not see that any security issues were addresses by that newest version. 2.1.3 was a security fix, which users were advised to install promptly (and I did)

2.2 fixes bugs I never noticed and new features I didn't immediately need, so I can see why even good blog administrators might have waited to upgrade this one. I'm not sure BlogSecurity is correct to say 2.2 is the only secure version.

For people using Web hosts with control panels and doing installs and upgrades through a control panel like "Fantastico," the latest version they're offering is 2.1.3.

I agree that Wordpress is a bit of a pain to upgrade if you've done customization. I also like to manually back up my databases before I install a new version. The whole process takes about half an hour if I include the downloading, untarring, killing off files manually, and so forth.

Re:Time for web applications to grow up

[laffer1]

Most applications that do update checks I've used only do so from the administration interface. e107 and jforum both check for updates. (php and java apps) Its possible to do the checks. However, downloading updates means the webapp has to have space to download files automatically. From a security perspective, it seems stupid to add this feature unless the webapp already needs writable space. The update feature could introduce an additional attack vector.

Re:self-updating

[Alphager]

Maybe Wordpress could offer tools to help users better manage updates. Firefox does a great job these days.

An Application messing up files past my package-management system? Not on my system.

Re:Time for web applications to grow up

[AKAImBatman]

I think it's about time web applications like WordPress included an update service.

It depends on what you mean. Wordpress already tells you when a new version is available. What it doesn't do is automatically install it for you. In the case of PHP apps, this is a good thing. (At least, as far as running a PHP app in the first place can be considered a "good thing".)

Wordpress installations rarely run the vanilla software. Usually the look has been customized by modifying templates and/or plugins have been added to provide new functionality. In order to do either of these tasks, you have to modify the PHP code. Wordpress provides an easy-to-use interface to do this, but it doesn't help anything if you upgrade your system. Your look and customizations will go "poof!" the moment you untar that new version. Thus upgrading is a rather painful process that requires that users backup and reapply all their modifications. That's why no one ever upgrades PHP apps if they can help it. :-/

Re:Thanks OSS!

[leenks]

Your original post would be more applicable to closed source software than open source. If a hole is reported in open source software you CAN do something about it immediately if you want.

I was hacked...

[TheGreatOrangePeel]

As someone who has just recently been hacked (Druapal 5.1, not WordPress, but I almost went that direction) I can say that I've recently seen my fair share of hacked Wordpress sites (via links to/from referrers) that have been listed as 'defaced' with, "Attack Technics : FTP Protokol" listed on the bragging-rights page. In my particular case it was because my hosting service allows anonymous FTP uploads(?!) with no 'correct' way to disable it (???!!!) -- my solution was to allow 0KB of FTP transfer for anonymous users.

For those whishing to see for themselves and laugh/shutter/worry, etc they can do so by clicking here AT THEIR OWN RISK [turk-h.org].

Re:Time for web applications to grow up

[PCM2]

Wordpress provides an easy-to-use interface to do this, but it doesn't help anything if you upgrade your system. Your look and customizations will go "poof!" the moment you untar that new version.

Actually, this isn't true -- provided you use some common sense about how you customize your Wordpress blog. It doesn't make a lot of sense to go ahead and apply all your customizations to a theme called "default," for example (though I'm sure that lots of people do this). When you go and untar the new version, the "default" theme will be overwritten, as you point out. But if you had taken the time to make a copy of the default theme before you started mucking with it -- into a directory called, I dunno, "mytheme," perhaps -- your theme wouldn't get overwritten by anything in the tarball and your look and customizations would still be there as soon as you upgraded your database.

More of a hassle, I suspect, is that a lot of people run Wordpress on CPanel hosts -- CPanel is a popular server management platform that lets shared hosting customers control their sites without shell access -- and CPanel does not make it particularly easy to upgrade Wordpress. On a lot of hosts I've seen, for example, the function to extract a tarball is configured to never overwrite any files. So far as I can see, the only way to upgrade Wordpress is to rename your current install to a directory called "wordpress-old" or something, then extract the tarball, then copy over all of your modifications by hand using a Web-based file manager. I imagine this is pretty much beyond the capabilities of many Wordpress users. (But then, nobody is forced to maintain their own blog software. I suspect many do it out of a misguided sense of "leet"-ness.)

Re:Time for web applications to grow up

[PCM2]

The default login screen for Wordpress does indeed automatically inform you of new updates. The problem is, it doesn't really seem to explain them properly. If I load it up right now, there's a notice telling me that Wordpress 2.2 was released 9 days ago. If I originally installed Wordpress longer than 9 days ago, this notice should be enough to tip me off that there's a new version available. Nowhere, however, does it explain that the 2.2 release supercedes the 2.1.3 release and that the 2.1.3 release should be considered insecure. In fact, immediately prior to the notice about the 2.2 release is a notice saying that the latest security update to the 2.1.x tree is available. Many people would be willing to upgrade their Wordpress install to get security updates. Fewer, I suspect, would be willing to upgrade to a full point version release just for kicks.

So I read this as...

[moore.dustin]

So Wordpress is not secure and its users do not know how or perhaps do not even care to make it secure. That, to me, means that if WP does not change its delivery and security by default, tons of blogs will be compromised. That therefore means the market will be wide open for a service that has a secure code base that can be updated easily.

Good riddance if that is the case. If they cannot adapt to the needs of its users, they deserve what will come to them, though their users do not :(

Re:what about Blogger?

[Cairnarvon]

What? It's not under WP's (or Google's) control if people who run their blogging software themselves don't remember to update often. All WordPress.com blogs are automatically updated to the latest version. This is about people who have a WordPress blog on their own webspace.

This doesn't have anything to do with the WordPress crew sucking at security, just their users.

Re:How do you fix it?

[NeoThermic]

With a decent set of rules, mod_security isn't a joke. Who's to say that a nice 0-day won't pop up during that time you've decided to be out of the country? If your site is popular enough, boom, you're exploited before you have a chance to patch. There's a few rules that you can make that are generic enough to stop most basic automated attempts and simple POCs. These could give you enough spare time to patch the required item(s). Don't ever forget that security is an onion concept. Many layers helps, as if someone gets through one, there's another waiting right there. It's like the same reason why cars have seatbelts, airbags and crumple zones. Just one might save you in some instances, but there just might be one day where you're going to need more than just one.

NeoThermic