Hackers Exploiting Unpatched WordPress Plugin Flaw to Create Secret Admin Accounts
Jul 01, 2023
Website Security / Cyber Threat
As many as 200,000 WordPress websites are at risk of ongoing attacks exploiting a critical unpatched security vulnerability in the Ultimate Member plugin. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-3460 (CVSS score: 9.8), impacts all versions of the Ultimate Member plugin, including the latest version (2.6.6) that was released on June 29, 2023. Ultimate Member is a popular plugin that facilitates the creation of user-profiles and communities on WordPress sites. It also provides account management features. "This is a very serious issue: unauthenticated attackers may exploit this vulnerability to create new user accounts with administrative privileges, giving them the power to take complete control of affected sites," WordPress security firm WPScan said in an alert. Although details about the flaw have been withheld due to active abuse, it stems from an inadequate blocklist logic put in place to alter the wp_capabilities user meta value of a new user to that of an administrator a
