Thursday, May 1, 2025
HomeCyber Security NewsWordPress Plugin Flaw Let Attackers Hijack 1m Websites

WordPress Plugin Flaw Let Attackers Hijack 1m Websites

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

The widely-used Elementor plugin, “Essential Addons for Elementor,” has been discovered to have a security flaw that enables unauthorized users to gain administrative control, potentially impacting millions of WordPress websites.

PatchStack recently uncovered a critical unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-32243, in versions 5.4.0 to 5.7.1 of the Elementor plugin “Essential Addons for Elementor,” enabling potential attackers to reset passwords and gain unauthorized access to administrator accounts.

Elementor

A Flaw in Essential Addons for Elementor

The vulnerability arises from the lack of password reset key validation, allowing direct modification of a user’s password without proper authentication.

- Advertisement - Google News

This critical vulnerability (CVE-2023-32243) presents severe repercussions such as unauthorized data access, website tampering, malware dissemination, trust loss, and legal compliance issues. Still, a malicious password reset requires knowledge of a targeted system’s username.

To avoid suspicion, the attacker must input random values for ‘page_id’ and ‘widget_id’ while also providing the correct nonce value (‘eael-resetpassword-nonce’) to validate the password reset request and set a new password (‘eael-pass1’ and ‘eael-pass2’) in the exploit process.

PatchStack highlights the availability of the essential-add-ons-element or nonce value on the WordPress site’s front-end page, as it is stored in the $this->localize_objects variable by the load_commnon_asset function. With a valid username set on the ‘rp_login’ parameter, the attacker can effectively gain control of the targeted user’s account by changing their password.

The security firm suggests that the plugin vendor effectively addressed the issue by implementing a function to validate the presence and legitimacy of password reset keys in reset requests, releasing the fix in Essential Addons for Elementor version 5.7.2, urging all users to update to the latest version promptly.

The vendor addressed the vulnerability by implementing a simple patch, utilizing the ‘eael_resetpassword_rp_data_*’ value to verify the password reset process, as the code directly reset a user password without proper verification of the reset key’s authenticity.

Vulnerability

Disclosure timeline

Here below, we have mentioned the complete disclosure timeline:-

  • 08 May, 2023 – We found the vulnerability and contacted the plugin vendor.
  • 11 May, 2023 – Essential Addons for Elementor version 5.7.2 was published to patch the reported issues.
  • 11 May, 2023 – Added the vulnerabilities to the Patchstack vulnerability database.

To ensure the secure execution of certain actions in WordPress, it’s crucial to implement access control and nonce checks and utilize the check_password_reset_key function, especially for login, registration, password reset/recovery, and database interaction.

Struggling to Apply The Security Patch in Your System? – 
Try All-in-One Patch Manager Plus

Gurubaran
Gurubaran
Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.

Latest articles

Managing Shadow IT Risks – CISO’s Practical Toolkit

Managing Shadow IT risks has become a critical challenge for Chief Information Security Officers...

Application Security in 2025 – CISO’s Priority Guide

Application security in 2025 has become a defining concern for every Chief Information Security...

Preparing for Quantum Cybersecurity Risks – CISO Insights

Quantum cybersecurity risks represent a paradigm shift in cybersecurity, demanding immediate attention from Chief...

Securing Digital Transformation – CISO’s Resource Hub

In today’s hyper-connected world, securing digital transformation is a technological upgrade and a fundamental...

Resilience at Scale

Why Application Security is Non-Negotiable

The resilience of your digital infrastructure directly impacts your ability to scale. And yet, application security remains a critical weak link for most organizations.

Application Security is no longer just a defensive play—it’s the cornerstone of cyber resilience and sustainable growth. In this webinar, Karthik Krishnamoorthy (CTO of Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface), will share how AI-powered application security can help organizations build resilience by

Discussion points


Protecting at internet scale using AI and behavioral-based DDoS & bot mitigation.
Autonomously discovering external assets and remediating vulnerabilities within 72 hours, enabling secure, confident scaling.
Ensuring 100% application availability through platforms architected for failure resilience.
Eliminating silos with real-time correlation between attack surface and active threats for rapid, accurate mitigation

More like this

Netgear EX6200 Flaw Enables Remote Access and Data Theft

Security researchers have disclosed three critical vulnerabilities in the Netgear EX6200 Wi-Fi range extender...

Tesla Model 3 VCSEC Vulnerability Lets Hackers Run Arbitrary Code

A high security flaw in Tesla’s Model 3 vehicles, disclosed at the 2025 Pwn2Own...

Apache ActiveMQ Vulnerability Lets Remote Hackers Execute Arbitrary Code

A high vulnerability in Apache ActiveMQ’s .NET Message Service (NMS) library has been uncovered,...