Site takeovers possible with Jupiter WordPress plugin exploit

BleepingComputer reports that malicious actors could exploit a critical vulnerability within the Jupiter Theme and JupiterX Core plugins for WordPress to facilitate privilege escalation. Attackers could also leverage the flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-1654, to modify site content, infect sites with malicious scripts, or delete sites, said Wordfence researchers, who discovered the bug within the plugins' "uninstallTemplate" function, which allows privilege escalation to admin. Artbees, who developed the plugins, released a partially patched version of Jupiter Theme, JupiterX Theme, and JupiterX Core plugins on April 28 before releasing the complete patch on May 10. Meanwhile, more less-severe security bugs have also been addressed as part of the May 10 update including a medium severity arbitrary plugin deactivation and settings modification flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-1656; a high severity path traversal and local file inclusion vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-1657; a medium severity arbitrary plugin deletion flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-1658; and a medium severity information disclosure, denial of service, and modification vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-1659.