Executive brief
WooCommerce, a popular e-commerce platform for WordPress, contains a critical security flaw that allows unauthorized individuals to run malicious code on a website's server. By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could take complete control of an online store, potentially stealing customer data, modifying website content, or disrupting business operations. This issue specifically affects version 7.1.0 and requires immediate attention to prevent site compromise.
Technical details
A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability exists in WooCommerce 7.1.0 due to improper sanitization of the 'product-type' parameter in the class-wc-meta-box-product-images.php component. An unauthenticated attacker can exploit this by sending a specially crafted HTTP request containing shell commands or PHP code within the affected parameter. The vulnerability stems from the application using unsanitized input to dynamically instantiate classes or execute system-level commands, allowing the attacker to write malicious PHP files directly to the web root. Successful exploitation results in full system compromise under the privileges of the web server user. While the advisory focuses on version 7.1.0, users should verify their installation and apply any available security patches from the vendor.
Affected products
- Automattic WooCommerce 7.1.0
Timeline
- 2022-12-07: other: Vulnerability discovered/reported by researcher
- 2023-03-31: disclosed: Exploit code published on Exploit-DB
- 2026-06-20: advisory: CVE published and NVD record created