PSA: Attackers Actively Exploiting Critical Vulnerability in Essential Addons for Elementor
On May 11 2023, Essential Addons for Elementor, a WordPress plugin with over one million active installations, released a patch for a critical vulnerability that made it possible for any unauthenticated user to reset arbitrary user passwords, including user accounts with administrative-level access. This vulnerability was discovered and responsibly disclosed by security researcher Rafie Muhammed.
Over the past few days we’ve seen millions of probing attempts for the plugin’s readme.txt file, which are likely to be attackers probing for the presence of the plugin to build a target site exploit list, along with over 6,900 blocked exploit attempts. Our attack data is limited due to the fact that the rule only triggers if the plugin is installed on a site with a vulnerable version, but a programmatic exploit was made public on Github on May 14th. This is the type of vulnerability that tends to see widespread attacks due to a combination of a large install base, ease of exploitation, and severity of impact, and we anticipate that exploit attempts will only ramp up from here.
Wordfence Premium, Care, and Response customers received a firewall rule the same day the issue was disclosed on May 11, 2023. Wordfence free users will receive that same protection 30 days later on June 20, 2023. Considering how easily this vulnerability can be successfully exploited, we highly recommend all users of the plugin update ASAP to ensure their site is not compromised by this vulnerability.
Vulnerability Details
Description: Essential Addons for Elementor
Source: wordfence.com