CVE-2020-6168 in Minimal Coming Soon
Summary
by MITRE
A flaw in the WordPress plugin, Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode through 2.10, allows authenticated users with basic access to enable and disable maintenance-mode settings (impacting the availability and confidentiality of a vulnerable site, along with the integrity of the setting).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/20/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2020-6168 resides within the Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode WordPress plugin, affecting versions through 2.10. This flaw represents a significant security weakness that undermines the integrity of website maintenance configurations and impacts core availability and confidentiality aspects of the affected system. The issue manifests as an insufficient authorization check that permits users with minimal privileges to manipulate critical maintenance mode settings.
This vulnerability stems from inadequate access control mechanisms within the plugin's code implementation. The flaw allows authenticated users who possess basic permissions to toggle maintenance mode on and off, effectively bypassing the intended security controls that should restrict such administrative actions to privileged users only. The technical implementation fails to properly validate user permissions before executing maintenance mode configuration changes, creating an authorization bypass scenario that directly violates security best practices.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple availability concerns to encompass both confidentiality and integrity dimensions of the information security triad. When unauthorized users can enable or disable maintenance mode, they gain the ability to disrupt service availability by activating maintenance mode during critical operations or disabling it to expose the website to potential attacks. Additionally, the integrity of the website's operational state becomes compromised as maintenance mode settings can be modified without proper authorization, potentially leading to unauthorized access to sensitive website components and data.
From a cybersecurity perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-284, which addresses improper access control issues, and represents a classic case of insufficient authorization checks within web applications. The flaw enables an attacker with basic user credentials to perform administrative actions that should require elevated privileges, creating a privilege escalation scenario that can be exploited to compromise the overall security posture of the WordPress installation. This vulnerability also maps to ATT&CK technique T1078 which covers valid accounts and privilege escalation through unauthorized access to administrative functions.
Organizations affected by this vulnerability should immediately implement mitigations including updating to the patched version of the plugin, reviewing user permissions to ensure appropriate access controls are in place, and monitoring for unauthorized maintenance mode toggling activities. The recommended approach involves restricting administrative capabilities to verified privileged users only while implementing additional logging mechanisms to detect suspicious configuration changes. Security teams should also conduct comprehensive audits of all installed WordPress plugins to identify similar authorization bypass vulnerabilities that could pose comparable risks to their web infrastructure security.