Message-ID: <CACAgZ507exLA4Zv9MysB7E99-Gg_4xn2wqNAM+ew2MiZhTSP0Q@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 19:32:49 +0100
From: Steffen Rogge <it.steffen.rogge@...il.com>
To: fulldisclosure@...lists.org
Subject: [FD] Wordpress Configuration Error on XDA-Developers.com led to
 full Web-Server Access and shut down website

Hello Subscribers,

As an Introduction i would like to say that this is my first announcement
and i am not happy about the way it went.
I am a daily reader of the website XDA-Developers which is mainly
announcing information about Android Devices and mobile trends.

At the 07.03.2016 around 10:10 AM i accessed on of their articles an landed
on a strange 404 Page telling me that
http://www.xda-developers.com/antutu-releases-report-on-current-top-10-smartphone-socs/wp-config.php
could not be found.
As a security interested guy i tried to access /wp-admin/install.php and
voila, the Wordpress first setup Page was available.
The vulnerability had to be closed ASAP because of 35.000 users being
online at that time, so i created a free mysql database online and let it
run trough the setup.
After it was complete the site was not accessible anymore and the only post
shown was the Wordpress Hello World post.

With that said anyone could have used the vulnerability to install
wordpress and upload a webshell in less than a minute und deploy another
webshell hidden in the web root and dumping the user database afterwards or
gain access to hidden files.

As i wanted to tell XDA that their site had to be compromised to prevent
damage i tried to contact them trough various channels.
Emails to the webmaster, private messages to the site admin and editors,
several twitter posts but no one was giving any attention to the problem.
The site was back up shortly after, but there was no sign of them
announcing that someone had access to their webserver, as if nothing ever
happened.
I hope not all the sites who have my data saved are treating it that way
and i am kind of dissappointed, because i thought such a popular site would
be able to deal with security issues and raise truth public awareness.

The Security Issue is fixed by now and i hope they will change their mind
when the next incident happens.

Thank you for providing this great mailing list and another thank you goes
to GOLEM.de which provided me with help in this topic and how to handle it.

*TIMELINE:*

2016-03-07 # 10:10 AM
Vulnerability discovered

2016-03-07 # 10:15 AM
Completed Setup to prevent Site from further damage

2016-03-07 # 10:24 AM
Contacted Webmaster via Email-Address from Google Cache

2016-03-07 # 11:30 AM
Contacted Site Admin, Managing Editor and another Editor via private
messaging system after the site was up again

2016-03-07 # 01:13 PM
Twitter post to website account to inform about security breach,after not
response so far

2016-03-08 # 08:13 AM
Email to Golem.de on how to deal with the security issue

2016-03-11 # 05:46 AM
Received email from Golem.de with the advice to publish it here
Still no response (Email or News) from XDA-Developers


Regards,
Steffen Rogge

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