Jupiter X Core plugin could enable hackers to hijack websites

Another WordPress plugin, Jupiter X Core, has displayed a new vulnerability that could allow hackers to hijack accounts and upload files without authentication. Researchers stated that the affected plugin is a premium service that sets up WooCommerce and WordPress websites.

The plugin is a straightforward tool with a powerful visual editor employed by more than 170,000 websites.

 

The Jupiter X Core plugin has two significant flaws.

 

According to investigations, the Jupiter X Core plugin has a couple of vulnerabilities. The first vulnerability is CVE-2023-38388. The flaw could allow unauthenticated users to upload files, resulting in arbitrary code on the affected server.

The security flaw has a severity score of 9.0 out of 10 and impacts plugin versions 3.3.5 or older. Fortunately, the WordPress developers patched the bug in their version 3.3.8.

Hackers could exploit that flaw since there are no authentication reviews within the plugin’s upload function. The vendor resolves to add a check function that activates a second review to prevent uploading malicious file types.

The other vulnerability is CVE-2023-38389, which could enable users without authentication to take over any WordPress user account if they know the email address. The second flaw has a severity score of 9.8 out of 10 and impacts all Jupiter X Core versions from 3.3.8 or older.

The admins fixed the issue earlier this month by releasing version 3.4.3. Hence, websites that employ the Jupiter X Core plugin should use the latest update to avoid infection.

Cybersecurity experts explain that the recent problem is that the ajax_handler function in the Facebook login method of the plugin enabled a user without authentication to establish any WordPress user’s ‘social-media-user-facebook-id’ meta with any value through the ‘set_user_facebook_id’ prompt.

Therefore, an attacker could abuse the function to authenticate any registered user on the site since the meta value could enable user authentication in WordPress if they input a valid email address.

Researchers have yet to find an ongoing exploit of the two critical vulnerabilities in the Jupiter X Core plugin. Therefore, website admins still have time to update their flawed versions and prevent potential exploits from hackers.