WordPress Twenty Fifteen Theme Information Disclosure Scanner

WordPress is a highly popular open-source content management system used by millions of websites worldwide. It offers versatile plug-in architecture and a template system known as themes, among which Twenty Fifteen is one of its standard themes. The Twenty Fifteen theme is used to give a minimalistic and responsive design to blogs and websites. Due to its widespread utilization, vulnerabilities within WordPress and its themes can have significant repercussions, making detection and mitigation crucial. The theme and WordPress as a whole are managed and maintained by a huge community of developers and users who contribute their resources to safeguard its security.

Information disclosure vulnerabilities occur when applications unintentionally leak sensitive data about their environment or configuration to unauthorized users. In the context of WordPress and the Twenty Fifteen theme, such disclosures can expose critical internal paths or system configurations. This can potentially lead attackers to formulate more potent attacks by having insights into the system's internal structure. Detecting these vulnerabilities is crucial to ensuring that attackers do not have any unintentional edge over system administrators in understanding the deployed environment.

The vulnerability in the WordPress Twenty Fifteen theme arises from the improper handling of PHP errors, which in turn leaks sensitive file path information. By sending a specific crafted request to a particular PHP endpoint, an attacker can trigger an error message that includes the full path to the file system. This path disclosure can aid attackers by mapping out the application's directory structure, which is essential information in planning further attacks. Although this vulnerability itself might not result in a direct threat, it provides additional information for attackers to leverage in future exploits.

If this information disclosure vulnerability is exploited by malicious actors, it can result in more severe security breaches. Attackers can use the disclosed path information to craft additional attacks, such as directory traversal, remote file inclusion, or even more complex exploits targeting other vulnerabilities. This could potentially lead not only to unauthorized data access but also to full system compromise if combined with other vulnerabilities. Furthermore, knowledge of internal paths can facilitate the development of targeted malware or backdoor attacks.

REFERENCES

• https://wordpress.org/themes/twentyfifteen/