WP SSRF MAR 2024: 4 Big WP Server-Side Request Forgery

Be informed about the latest WP Server-Side Request Forgery, identified and reported publicly. As these WP SSRF MAR 2024 vulnerabilities have a severe negative impact on any WordPress Security, consider our security audit. It is a +300 INCREASE, compared to previous month, as specifically targeted WordPress Server-Side Request Forgeries. Consider for your online safety, a managed WP/Woo Security AUDIT, – OR – switching with a TOP10LIST alternative WP Security Plugin - OR - Hire professionals for managed Security.

WP SSRF MAR 2024

As these unrestricted access cases from publicly reported vulnerable plugins are on your domain, it opens Pandora’s box from a security point of view. The following cases made headlines PUBLICLY just last month in the WP SSRF MAR 2024 & WP Server-Side Request Forgery category:

BRIEF: WP Server-Side Request Forgery is a type of hosting server security exploit, where an attacker abuses the basic functionality of a hosting environment, causing it to access or manipulate information in the realm of that server that would otherwise not be directly accessible to the attacker.

What is WP Server-Side Request Forgery?

Server-Side request forgery (also known as SSRF) occur whenever a WordPress or WooCommerce is fetching a remote resource without validating the user-supplied URL. It allows an attacker to coerce the public side (front-end) to send a crafted request to an unexpected destination (back-end, database, files), even when protected by a firewall, or another type of network access control list (ACL). As modern websites provide end-users with convenient features, fetching an URL becomes a common tactic. As a result, the incidence of SSRF is increasing. Also, the severity of SSRF is growing higher due to publicly accessible cloud services and the complexity of their architectures.

What is the impact of a WP SSRF attack?

A successful SSRF attack can often result in unauthorized actions on the hosting environment or access to data within WordPress and WooCommerce, or on other back-end systems that the application can communicate with like database or 3rd party integrations (payment modules, seo modules, marketing modules, analytics modules, etc). In some situations, the SSRF vulnerability might allow an attacker to perform arbitrary command execution, compromising everything. A specific and successful SSRF exploit that causes connections to external systems, always generates malicious direct attacks, that appear to originate from the domain itself or hosting environment, continuing its attack towards the next vulnerable external system.