An SQL Injection vulnerability discovered in one of the famous WordPress plugin WP Statistics, which is used by more than 300,000+ websites.
This plugin is used to find the visitor statistics and provide the graphical representation. The plugin is very useful for every webmaster.
SQL Injection Vulnerability
SQL injection is a technique which attacker takes non-validated input vulnerabilities and inject SQL commands through web applications that are executed in the backend database. You get more details on SQL Injection here.
Also read WordPress Download Manager Plugin Vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting attack
This vulnerability discovered by Securi it is caused by the absence of sanitization in user-provided data and the vulnerability resides with wp_statistics_searchengine_query() in file functions.php, which is an AJAX functionality.
Securi experts from Securi discovered the function doesn’t check for additional privileges, allowing subscribers to execute this shortcode and inject malicious data to its attributes.
wpstatistics are being passed as parameters for important functions and this shouldn’t be an issue if those parameters were sanitized.
Mitigation
Wpstatistics resolved the issue and released a fix for SQL Injection vulnerability with the version (12.0.8). Users are recommended to update as soon as possible.
How to Update
You can update from Dashboard >> Updates >> Update Now OR through Plugins >> Installed plugins >> Update.
Also read How to Do Penetration testing with your WordPress website detailed Explanation
