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description= Understand the techniques attackers use to break into WordPress sites. Use that knowledge to defend your site and stay secure.;
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nducted using the excellent nmap port scanner or an alternative security tool carrying on from our enumeration of network services using the port scanner we could run vulnerability scans against the discovered services to identify exploitable services or other items of interest openvas vulnerability scanner the greenbone vulnerability manager gvm previously known as openvas is one option this is an open source vulnerability scanner that can be installed locally or enterprise appliances are also available from greenbone networks we also host the open source openvas scanner for testing internet accessible targets as part of our security testing platform nikto vulnerability scanner nikto is another vulnerability scanner that focuses on the discovery of known vulnerable scripts configuration mistakes and other web server items of interest the nikto tool has been around for many years yet still has a place in the penetration testers toolbox tools such as this throw tens of thousands of tests against target in an attempt to discover known vulnerabilities and other low hanging fruit it is a noisy process filling the target system logs with 404 s and other errors not recommended if you are going after a target ninja style pentest red team bypass sucuri or cloudflare web firewall many wordpress sites opt for third party services to help protect the site from attacks by using a web based firewall proxy a service such as sucuri or cloudflare sits between the users browser and the wordpress site attacks launched at the site can be detected and blocked by the firewall the firewall proxies the traffic by using dns the sites dns is pointed at servers belonging to sucuri or cloudflare so the user or attacker will resolve the hostname and connect to the ip of the firewall system if we determine the real ip address of the server and add an entry to our hosts file we can bypass the firewall and go directly to the webserver hosting the site this is significant if the site is not well maintained and relying on the protection of the firewall for example a vulnerable plugin may be present but being blocked by the firewall we bypass the firewall exploit the vulnerable plugin and the server checking dns records using dns records is the most effective way of identifying the real ip address for bypassing a site hosted behind sucuri or cloudflare historical dns records may show the original ip address before the firewall service was implemented mail records mx if mail is hosted on the same server as the website then this will reveal the real host txt spf records might also reveal ip addresses of interest tls ssl certificate searches historical tls ssl searches may also find real hostnames associated with the sites actual ip address if they can matched other reconnaissance techniques may reveal host names and ip addresses of interest once you have an ip address that you suspect could be the ip address add it to your etc hosts file with the sites hostname this will force your system to bypass dns and go directly the ip address if the site loads there is a good chance this is the correct ip address wpscan wpscan is a popular wordpress security testing tool that ties many of these simple enumeration techniques together enabling users to quickly enumerate a wordpress installation it has a commercial license restricting use for testing your own wordpress sites and non commercial usage it attempts to identify users plugins and themes depending on the selected command line options and also show vulnerabilities for each of the discovered plugins guide to installing wpscan nmap nse scripts for wordpress nmap comes bundled with nse scripts that extend the functionality of this popular port scanner a few of the nmap nse scripts are particularly helpful for enumerating wordpress users plugins and themes using the same techniques we have previously discussed the best thing about this option is if you have nmap installed you already have these scripts ready to go wordpress plugin and theme enum nse script wordpress brute force nse script wordpress user enum nse script example plugin and theme enumeration port state service 80 tcp open http http wordpress enum search limited to top 100 themes plugins plugins akismet contact form 7 4 1 latest version 4 1 all in one seo pack latest version 2 2 5 1 google sitemap generator 4 0 7 1 latest version 4 0 8 jetpack 3 3 latest version 3 3 wordfence 5 3 6 latest version 5 3 6 better wp security 4 6 4 latest version 4 6 6 google analytics for wordpress 5 3 latest version 5 3 themes twentytwelve _ twentyfourteen cmsmap another tool for enumeration of wordpress installations is cmsmap cmsmap tests wordpress as well as joomla drupal and moodle as with any of these enumeration tools it is crucial to keep it up to date if the themes and plugins lists are not updated regularly keep in mind that the latest components may not be detected attacking exploitation brute force wp login php form the most common attack against the wordpress user is brute forcing the password of an account to gain access to the back end of the wordpress system other ways a password can be compromised include sniffing the password in clear text over a http login session or even getting the credentials from a key logger on the workstation of the wordpress administrator accounts with administrator level access are the most sought after due to the amount of mischief an admin user can get up to adding php command shells or malicious javascript directly through the admin interface are common examples with the usernames we collected during information gathering we can get started or just try admin take a look at the login form wp login php notice how failed logins confirm the username when an incorrect password is entered this information is helpful to an attacker it also makes things more user friendly for the end user who has forgotten their username and password this feature has been debated and it was decided to keep this response within the wordpress code 3 tools for popping weak passwords brute forcing accounts of users is possible using a number of open source tools additionally there is worm like scripts available that have spread through the wordpress ecosystem these search for and spread to wordpress sites with weak admin passwords wpscan the previously mentioned wpscan tool in addition to enumeration can also perform brute force login attacks here is an example output from a test i ran with wpscan against a low end digital ocean vps 5 month where i had installed a default installation of wordpress ruby wpscan rb u 192 241 xx x68 threads 20 wordlist 500worst txt username testadmin snip starting the password brute forcer brute forcing user testadmin with 500 passwords 100 complete finished at thu jul 18 03 39 02 2013 elapsed time 00 01 16 reviewing the output 500 passwords tested against the testadmin account discovered during user enumeration those 500 passwords were tested in 1 minute and 16 seconds as the test was running there was zero disruption to the site a web server administrator would have no idea the attack took place without a security log monitoring system in place ossec does this very well the 500 worst password list used above is from skull security the site has a large number of password lists including the well known rockyou list 60mb that contains many more than 500 passwords nmap nse script nmap the port scanner can do much more than find open ports recent versions of nmap come bundled with nse scripts as a result it can be used to test many different vulnerabilities for example enumerating users and brute forcing wordpress passwords below shows an example run using the http wordpress enum nse script to enumerate wordpress users nmap sv script http wordpress enum script args limit 25 port state service reason 80 tcp open http syn ack http wordpress enum username found admin username found testadmin username found fred username found alice username found bob _search stopped at id 25 increase the upper limit if necessary with http wordpress enum limit below are the results from brute forcing wordpress accounts using the http wordpress brute nse script port state service reason 80 tcp open http syn ack http wordpress brute accounts testadmin mys3curepass login correct statistics _ perfomed 113 guesses in 19 seconds average tps 6 burp suite for those familiar with web application security testing the burp suite intruder tool can also be used for brute forcing wordpress passwords a wordpress login attempt is only a http post request after all configure burp intruder to send a valid username or a list of usernames along with a list of possible passwords and wait for the successful login brute force login via xmlrpc php the xmlrpc php capability is an api endpoint this endpoint allows mobile apps and other programmable access to backend functions of the wordpress site such as publishing posts it is enabled by default several attacks are possible against the endpoint depending on permissions and the version of the target wordpress installation using the xmlrpc php endpoint to attack wordpress accounts we may bypass security plugins that protect the login form from abuse this password guessing attack may also be faster with the result being you can attempt more passwords notice the d in curl this is the data sent as part of the post request you could also use burp or your favorite scripting language for this request curl x post d methodcall methodname wp getusersblogs methodname params param value admin value param param value pass value param params methodcall http examplewp com xmlrpc php in the response we will see an invalid password response or success it is easy to spot and work into your script denial of service dos via xmlrpc php another use of the xmlrpc php endpoint is to perform a denial of service attack if this capability is enabled we can send a small request to the server and get it to respond with a full page of content to a target of our choosing the idea is to make multiple requests from different systems and get them all to target a single host potentially knocking it offline due to network congestion first we enumerate the capabilities of the xmlrpc php endpoint curl x post d methodcall methodname system listmethods methodname params params methodcall http examplewp com xmlrpc php the response will be a list of available methods xml version 1 0 encoding utf 8 methodresponse params param value array data value string system listmethods string value value string system getcapabilities string value value string pingback extensions getpingbacks string value value string pingback ping string value value string mt publishpost string value truncated note the pingback ping indicating pingback is enabled use the following data for the pingback attempt methodcall methodname pingback ping methodname params param value string http denial of service target portno string value param param value string http blog url from wp string value param params methodcall disabling access to xmlrpc php from your web server or using htaccess is recommended if you are not using the api not only will it block any attacks but it will also reduce the amount of noise in your logs from the bots attempting to hit these api endpoints exploit wordpress plugin plugins themes and wordpress core all contain a large amount of php code from developers around the world these developers have differing abilities and focus when it comes to writing secure software for this reason there are thousands of exploitable vulnerabilities available to an attacker updating plugins the wordpress core and themes must be a routine task for any wordpress administrator to ensure the known vulnerabilities are patched common vulnerabilities include xss sql injection file upload and code execution all of these can have devastating consequences to a wordpress site search through metasploit and exploit db com for exploitable wordpress bugs revslider example exploit an example of a wordpress plugin exploit is from a vulnerability discovered 5 years ago the vulnerable revslider plugin resulted in tens of thousands of compromised wordpress sites to this day there are attempts to exploit it in our web server logs even in 2019 one reason it was such a popular plugin is that it was bundled with many themes a number of exploitation opportunities are possible but this is perhaps the easiest to demonstrate exploitation is as difficult as loading this url in a browser https examplewp com wp admin admin ajax php action revslider_show_image img wp config php the http request would download the wp config php file from the vulnerable site if it had the exploitable version of revslider installed the exploit type is known as a local file include as the attacker is tricking the application code into including a sensitive file in the output the wp config php is not normally accessible and contains the database credentials for the wordpress database user with the database password an attacker could attempt to login as the wordpress admin using the same password if passwords were re used a more common attack vector would be to login to the phpmyadmin script if installed as this uses the database credentials if mysql is exposed it may even possible to directly connect to the database using a mysql database client and the leaked credentials access to the database provides the attacker options to reset the administrator password attempt to crack the admin hash modify content in the database adding malicious js or iframes there are many possibilities for further exploitation once the credentials in wp config php are leaked exploit wordpress theme example exploits are available from various places and forums this example uses an exploit from the popular metasploit exploitation framework the vulnerable theme is the very popular optimizepress the vulnerability was released back in 2013 and versions after 1 45 are not vulnerable to this exploit using standard metasploit commands we can load the module configure the options select a payload and exploit the result is shell access on the server with only a few minutes of work in this example the vulnerability type is a file upload vulnerability in media upload php of the theme by exploiting the vulnerability we can upload a php shell or other code giving us code execution a key point to remember here is identification of the plugins and themes is the first step in a targeted attack exploiting a wordpress site numerous bots and automated attack scripts that exploit wordpress sites do not perform the enumeration phase they propel exploits at thousands of sites and hope for a successful payload plugins and themes not enabled can be exploited scanning for default locations of those vulnerable files is a highly common attack by automated bots exploiting wordpress core vulnerabilities in wordpress core crop up from time to time while remote unauthenticated vulnerabilit...
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