WordPress security changelog
CRITICAL CVE-2021-29504 Modified

Wp Cli: A security weakness

Wp Cli is affected by a security weakness. Exposure depends on how the affected operation is made reachable by the site. The resulting impact depends on how the affected component exposes the vulnerable operation.

CVE / CNA score 9.1 CVSS 3.1 · security-advisories@github.com
NVD score 7.4 CVSS 3.1 · nvd@nist.gov
Component
Wp Cli
Plugin slug
wp-cli
Affected
See vendor advisory
Safe version
See mitigation notes
Published
Jun 07, 2021
Weakness
CWE-295 — Improper Certificate Validation

This CVE was published Jun 07, 2021 and is one of 1 known issue for this plugin.

What to do

Update, patch or deactivate.

Update Wp Cli to a release outside the affected range, or disable and remove it until a fixed version is available.

No confirmed safe version is listed. Consider a vendor-supported patch or temporarily restricting the affected functionality while you assess the risk.

Deactivate only when warranted by your risk profile, or when advised by your hosting provider in the limited circumstances where the vulnerability cannot otherwise be mitigated. If you’re unsure which action is appropriate, contact Fused or your hosting provider for guidance.

Source record

Technical description

WP-CLI is the command-line interface for WordPress. An improper error handling in HTTPS requests management in WP-CLI version 0.12.0 and later allows remote attackers able to intercept the communication to remotely disable the certificate verification on WP-CLI side, gaining full control over the communication content, including the ability to impersonate update servers and push malicious updates towards WordPress instances controlled by the vulnerable WP-CLI agent, or push malicious updates toward WP-CLI itself. The vulnerability stems from the fact that the default behavior of `WP_CLI\Utils\http_request()` when encountering a TLS handshake error is to disable certificate validation and retry the same request. The default behavior has been changed with version 2.5.0 of WP-CLI and the `wp-cli/wp-cli` framework (via https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/pull/5523) so that the `WP_CLI\Utils\http_request()` method accepts an `$insecure` option that is `false` by default and consequently that a TLS handshake failure is a hard error by default. This new default is a breaking change and ripples through to all consumers of `WP_CLI\Utils\http_request()`, including those in separate WP-CLI bundled or third-party packages. https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/pull/5523 has also added an `--insecure` flag to the `cli update` command to counter this breaking change. There is no direct workaround for the default insecure behavior of `wp-cli/wp-cli` versions before 2.5.0. The workaround for dealing with the breaking change in the commands directly affected by the new secure default behavior is to add the `--insecure` flag to manually opt-in to the previous insecure behavior.

CVE / CNA vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

NVD vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

References

Primary and upstream sources